dawnredwood

Tree of the Week: Dawnredwood

  I once wrote a poem of the seasons of dawnredwood, Metasequoia glyptostroboides.  Let us deconstruct, starting with the name of this majestic tree, for as the Chinese philosopher Krishtalka noted: “The beginning of wisdom is calling things by their right name.”

  The Latin binomial itself is telling: “meta-sequoia” means “like-sequoia”, and dawnredwoods are related, in the Cupressaceae family, to the true redwoods, Sequoia and Sequoiadendron. The “glyptostrob-oides” refers to another sister genus in the Cupressaceae, Glyptostrobus....

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Authors
Jim Chatfield

Japanese Beetle Centennial

  Japanese beetles on a linden leaf or on a rose leaf or flower - to this we are accustomed. On certain plants though, such as cut-leaf rhamnus or as shown here from Wooster, Ohio on dawnredwood (Metasequoia glyptostroboides); somehow it seems like they do not have enough of a perch or dining area.  Perhaps it is the small-plates phenomenon. At any rate, the chewing-mouthparts damage here is quite familiar and Popillia japonica damage to the turf and ornamental industry is huge. In fact, a 2002 paper by Dan Potter and David Held of the University of Kentucky (Annu. Rev....

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Authors
Jim Chatfield