Metasequoia Glyptostroboid

2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38

Metasequoia glyptostroboid (Latin Metasequoia glyptostroboides) - the only species of conifers of the genus Metasequoia (Latin Metasequoia), belonging to the Cypress family (Latin Cupressaceae). Deciduous tree that sheds needles for the winter. One of the oldest inhabitants of our planet, which appeared one hundred and forty-five million years ago and has long been considered a fossil species, like a tree

Ginkgo biloba (lat. Ginkgo biloba), which is almost twice as old as this species. In addition to being a very ancient terrestrial tree, it is also a long-lived and rapidly growing representative of the coniferous kingdom of the planet.

What's in your name

The Latin name of the genus "Metasequoia" consists of two parts. If the first part of "Meta" is easy to understand, since this word is based on the Greek "meta", meaning "between" or "among", which speaks of the proximity of this tree species to the genus Sequoia, then about the Latin name "Sequoia" among botanists there is no consensus.

Some believe that Stefan Endlicher, an Austrian botanist, named the genus "Sequoia" after a Cherokee Indian chief named Sequoia, famous for inventing the alphabet and publishing a newspaper in his native Cherokee language. But there are other, more prosaic versions, based on different approaches of botanists to plants, when studying their structure.

Metasequoia differs from the evergreen Sequoia in the needles that fall for the winter. In this it is similar to plants of the genus Glyptostrobus (lat. Glyptostrobus), which is why at first it was attributed to this genus, from which it later received its specific epithet "glyptostroboides". The specific epithet is composed of two words: the Greek “glypto”, which translates as “sculpture”, and the Latin “strobus”, meaning “pine”.

Description

Glyptostroboid metasequoia is a fast-growing coniferous tree, which, like the Larch, loses its needles in the winter. Found in nature in just one place on the globe, in the hard-to-reach Chinese forests, today Metasequoia grows in many parts of the world, including Russia. The cold hardiness of the plant allows it to grow in the temperate zone, if frosts down to minus 32 degrees Celsius are not prolonged. The rapid growth of the tree made it possible, in a relatively short time, to increase the quantitative presence of the planet's long-liver on the globe.

In those distant times, when year-round summer reigned on earth's land, most likely Metasequoia was an evergreen tree. Climatic cataclysms taught the tree to shed its green needles for a cold period in order to preserve the life of the whole plant, with the arrival of heat, giving birth to new greenery. Forty-meter giants with reddish-brown bark change the color of their lush pyramidal green crown to bronze by autumn, dropping shortened shoots with needles to the surface of the earth. The bark of the tree peels off from the trunk in the form of long fibers.

A monoecious plant, the tree harbors both female and male flowers that appear in March along with soft new needles. After pollination, the female inflorescences turn into rounded green cones, which turn brown when the seeds are fully ripe and droop to the ground.

Usage

Endurance, frost resistance and rapid growth

Metasequoia glyptostroboid turned the most ancient earth tree into a popular culture in the arrangement of parks and gardens in many countries of the world, including Russia (Crimea, the Caucasus and up to the Moscow region and the glorious city of St. Petersburg), Canada, and the United States of America. For such purposes, several special garden forms of the plant have been bred. Reproduction by cuttings is more productive.