Wollemi Pine (Wollemia nobilis) at Brooklyn Botanic Garden
The Wollemi Pine
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Other "Living Fossils": Dawn Redwood and Ginkgo
The original dawn redwood specimen, discovered in 1943 in Hubei, China. (Photograph © Dr. Jinshuang Ma)
Many living plant species are known from the fossil record. However, it is unusual when a species is known from fossils before it is discovered as a living plant. Such was the case with the Wollemi pine: It had been known in the fossil record for decades but was not discovered alive in the wild until 1994.
The Dawn of Time
This was also the case with the dawn redwood (Metasequoia glyptostroboides), which for many years was only known from fossil records of the late Cretaceous period (100 to 20 million years ago). However, in 1943, a living specimen was found in the Chinese countryside by botanist Chan Wang, and the species was formally described in the scientific literature in 1948. Since that time, 5,700 dawn redwoods have been found in the wild in China, and the species has been widely cultivated throughout the world. Brooklyn Botanic Garden has 13 specimens on its grounds, and one of its scientists, Dr. Jinshuang Ma, is a leading authority on the dawn redwood.
Read more about Dr. Jinshuang Ma and the Metasequoia glyptostroboides.
An Old Stinker
Brooklyn Botanic Garden also has many individuals of the ginkgo (Ginkgo biloba), a tree famed for its medicinal properties and fleshy, foul-smelling seeds. This species, originally native to eastern China, is the only living example of the plant phylum Ginkgophyta, which first appeared in the fossil record in the late Paleozoic era (approximately 250 million years ago). Based on the fossil record, both dawn redwood and ginkgo previously had much wider ranges in the Northern Hemisphere, including North America and Europe.