PlantKey Open ecological atlas
Planner
Home / Browse / Metasequoia / Dawn Redwood
iNaturalist — CC, credited & licensed per image
Cupressaceae family

Dawn Redwood Metasequoia glyptostroboides

Dawn Redwood is an introduced plant, found in the lower 48 states. It grows to 100 ft in part shade – shade, with brown fruit.

Growing & care

USDA PLANTS · TRY
Conditions
Sources · Conditions
USDA PLANTS — Sun · Soil & moisture
USDA — SoilPH — Soil pH
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Fertility Requirement / Soil Adaptation — Fertility need · Adapts to
USDA — Temp-Min °F — Hardiness
Niinemets & Valladares 2006 (CC0) — Drought tolerance · Shade tolerance · Wet-soil tolerance
Sun
Part shade – shade
Soil & moisture
High moisture
Soil pH
6.2–8.4
Fertility need
Medium
Adapts to
Medium (loam)
Hardiness
USDA zone 6+
Drought tolerance
Low
Shade tolerance
Moderate
Wet-soil tolerance
Low waterlogging
Size & form
Sources · Size & form
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Height, Mature — Height
Derived (allometric) — width = height × functional-class crown ratio fit on USDA Urban Tree DB · Tallo; method per Jucker et al. 2022, Pretzsch et al. 2015 — Mature width
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Planting Density (per acre) — Spacing
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Growth Rate / Spread / Growth Form / Lifespan / Active Growth Period / Seed Period — Spread · Growth rate · Growth form · Active growth
USDA PLANTS — Lifespan
TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0) · USDA PLANTS — Foliage
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Fruit/Seed Color / Fruit Persistence — Fruit
Height
100 ft
Mature width
~ 30 ft wide DERIVED derived estimate — open-grown crown allometry (height × growth-form ratio); not a measurement
Spacing
6–12 ft apart from USDA planting density
Spread
None — clumping
Growth rate
Rapid
Growth form
Single stem
Lifespan
long-lived
Foliage
Deciduous needleleaf · fine texture
Active growth
Spring through autumn
Fruit
Brown persists into winter
In the garden
Sources · In the garden
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Propagation Method / Commercial Availability — Propagate by · In the trade
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Germination (cold stratification) — Seed starting
USDA PLANTS — Seed Period — Seeds ripen
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Foliage Texture / Browse Palatability / Resprout — Resprouts if cut
Propagate by
Seed, Cuttings, Bare root, Container
Seed starting
No stratification needed
Seeds ripen
Summer seed-collection / harvest window
In the trade
Routinely available
Resprouts if cut
Yes regrows after top-kill
Canopy layer — Sits in the canopy of a layered food forest or polyculture. Its deep roots also work the lower soil profile.Open guide →
Chop-and-drop biomass — Soft, low-density wood is quick-growing and easy to cut back — coppice it and drop the trimmings in place as mulch.Open guide →
derived roles
AI = read by an AI vision model · DERIVED = a computed estimate, not a direct measurement. The “How we know this” section below details each.
The garden year bloom → fruit → fall colour
J
F
M
A
M
J
J
A
S
O
N
D
Pollen
Fall colour
Pollen cones Fall colour
Pollen cones · Apr — USDA PLANTS · a gymnosperm doesn't flower; this is pollen-cone release (pollination / allergy timing), not a bloom
Fall colour · 192 obs · USA-NPN observed “coloured leaves” — timing varies by site & year
When to sow · for your area

Sow timing keys off your local last- and first-frost dates.

Species characteristics from USDA PLANTS (public domain) + TRY (CC BY) — general guidance, not a guarantee for your exact site. Deer "browsing" is documented palatability, not a deer-proof claim.

Wildlife & pollinators

How pollinator value is scored →
Wildlife & visitors 1 bird

Open records of who else uses Dawn Redwood — a generalist food-web signal, kept separate from the keystone Ecological Value.

Recorded eaten by 1 bird species (fruit, seed, browse):

Sphyrapicus varius · Yellow-Bellied Sapsucker
Interaction records (observations, not exhaustive) from GloBI → (CC0). Counts are distinct species; names are the most-recorded. Common names from Wikidata (CC0).
Species thumbnails re-hosted from iNaturalist — Creative Commons, credited per image (hover for credit). Click any species to see it on iNaturalist. Not exhaustive; many taxa have no openly-licensed photo yet.
How we know this (3) Methods & honest limits
Photosynthesis Direct fact

A recorded categorical fact: each species is tagged C3 (standard), C4 (heat/water-efficient) or CAM (succulent, night-time CO₂ uptake) — or a facultative combination. We only show a trait card for the noteworthy C4/CAM cases; C3 is the unremarkable majority, kept in the data but not surfaced as a card.

Kattge, J. et al. TRY plant trait database — Categorical Traits Dataset (2012).
Climate niche (heat tolerance & native rainfall) Derived

We take the plant’s U.S. county range and look up each county’s long-term climate, then summarise: native rainfall = the median annual rainfall across its counties; heat tolerance = the warm end (90th percentile) of average temperature across its range (mirroring how our cold-hardiness floor uses an extreme). Counties + medians blunt the roadside/observer bias that makes point-level climate unreliable. Needs at least five placeable counties.

Honest limits: A realized, sampling-biased niche (where it has been recorded, not its physiological optimum), and county climate is coarse — large Western counties span deserts and mountains. Derived guide, never a measured fact.

Realized-niche / climate-envelope approach (Pearson & Dawson 2003; Soberón 2007). Climate: NOAA NCEI nClimDiv county normals (1991–2020).
Mature width Derived

For woody plants that have a height but no measured crown, we estimate width = height × a crown-to-height ratio fit for that plant’s form (conifers narrower than broadleaf trees, shrubs widest), calibrated on our measured open-grown crowns and capped at the largest one ever measured. A measured crown always wins; herbaceous plants get nothing (no anchor).

Honest limits: A coarse class-median estimate for garden-scale spacing, not a measurement; woody single/multi-stem forms only.

Allometric basis: Jucker et al. 2022 (Tallo); Pretzsch et al. 2015; McPherson et al. 2016 (USDA Urban Tree DB).
Derived values are computed from open data by a published method — labelled, cited, and never shown as a direct observation. Full methodology →
Sources for this entry (33) Open & cited
[01] Scientific name & family — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[02] Growth habit & duration — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[03] Native status & distribution — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[04] Common name — USDA PLANTS (via GBIF)
[17] Invasive / introduced status — US-RIIS v2.0 (USGS)
[19] Ecological value — GloBI
[23] Functional traits — TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0)
[24] Photosynthetic pathway — TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0)
[25] Climate niche — Derived — realized climate niche from U.S. county occurrences (GBIF) × NOAA NCEI county climate normals 1991–2020 (public domain)
[26] Wildlife & visitors — GloBI — Global Biotic Interactions (CC0)
[28] Rooting depth — Fan et al. 2017 (Dryad, CC0)
[32] Stress tolerance — Niinemets & Valladares 2006 (CC0)
[33] County range — GBIF Open Data — open-licensed occurrences (CC0/CC-BY) → county
Spot an error or have a better photo? Every field links to its source, and the whole dataset is open.
Cite this page Open data, please attribute

PlantKey’s data is open under CC BY-SA 4.0 — free to reuse and adapt, with attribution and the same licence. Photos keep their own per-image licence + credit (see Sources above).

Citation

Loading…

BibTeX 
Loading…