A fossil in the landscape

Tiny rooted cuttings of a dwarf dawn redwood are growing at a University of Georgia greenhouse. Cooperative extension specialist Paul Thomas and Houston County student Shireen Dhir successfully propagated rare dwarf dawn redwood trees this past summer.

Growing to 100 feet, the dawn redwood isn’t a landscape candidate. That is until a genetically deficient one was found growing among seedlings in a Georgia nursery. That dwarf tree is now 13 years old, 11 feet tall and unlikely to get much taller.

Nurseries would like to sell dwarf dawn redwoods because they conserve space compared to regular dawn redwoods and, like their taller parents, they are pest- and disease-free, requiring little maintenance.

But there is just one problem: There’s only one known dwarf tree.

“You’ve got this living fossil and this cool rare dwarf tree, but the problem is no one’s been able to propagate it,” Thomas said.

Read more about the project here.