By chance, Hu happened to have a reprint of Miki’s paper from 1941 and made the connection. Despite these challenges, complete specimens were collected and eventually ended up in the desk of Chinese botanist H. To further complicate things, World War II and the concurrent China Civil War were draining resources and further distancing the scientific community. Collection of additional samples was quite challenging as it required a difficult trek through 220 miles of remote mountainous trail that traversed dangerous “bandit-infested regions”.
Wang’s specimen attracted attention from Chinese botanists, but without a complete specimen containing all the plant’s anatomy, botanical classification was not possible. The locals referred to it as shui-sa or “water fir”. A short time later, in July 1943, Chan Wang, a scientist with China’s National Bureau of Forest Research, discovered a tree growing in a small, remote village in West-Central China that he believed could be new to science.
The genus consisted of 3 species that were all thought to be long extinct, but were found extensively in fossil beds throughout the Northern Hemisphere. Metasequoia fossils had long been a part of many Northern Hemisphere collections under a variety of incorrect names, but it was Miki that was first able to describe the genus correctly. In 1941, a Japanese paleobotanist described a sequoia-like species from fossils of the plant found in Pliocene fossil beds near Tokyo, naming it Metasequoia. This discovery has been noted to be one of the greatest for botany in the 20th century and the story behind the find is certainly a noteworthy tale in world history. Have you ever wondered what the earth looked like when the dinosaurs roamed? Humans didn’t realize that we have a living fossil among us that offers a glimpse into the past until the 1940s when the dawn redwood tree ( Metasequoia glyptostroboides) was “discovered” by scientists in China.
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