Dawn Redwood In Autumn Attire

Metasequoia glyptostroboides

The needle-like leaves on this deciduous tree are green during the spring and summer, and turn a lovely reddish color in the fall, and (over the course of a few days) then they all fall off the tree. One person I know calls it "The Sneezing Tree" because of the speed with which the needles fall off every autumn.

Here is an interesting website devoted to the tree.

And some interesting facts from my copy of Michael Dirr's "Manual of Woody Landscape Plants":

• It can grow 50 feet in 15 to 20 years.
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• leaves are bright green changing to brown in fall; can be an excellent orange-brown to red-brown, coloration is as good in South as in the North
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• The genus was described by Miki in 1941 from fossils discovered in Japan in Lower Pilocene strata. Extant specimens were found growing at the edges of rice paddies by T. Kan in China in the same year, and natives of the area call the shui-sa, or "water fir".
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• This tree has been growing and reproducing for 100 million years, and has been returned to North America by horticulturists after a 15 million year absence.