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this deciduous species belongs in a charleston landscape STORY AND PHOTOGRAPHS BY PJ GARTIN
I was nuts about extinct animals when I was a kid. I desperately wanted them to reappear. I deeply regretted the demise of the dodo bird and passenger pigeon, and spent days sulking because I’d never see a woolly mammoth traipse through my
backyard. I hoped scientists were wrong and that these beasts were somewhere off frol- icking with saber-toothed tigers in faraway, undiscovered places. Once I added flora to my list of curiosities, I was forced to confront the realities of
extinction again. Imagine my delight when I learned that a once-thought-to-be extinct tree named Metasequoia glyptos- troboides had reappeared on the botanical radar. Fifteen mil- lion years ago, dawn redwood grew in many parts of the world,
including North America. But until its rediscovery in China during the 1940s, we only knew of dawn redwood’s existence from fossil records.
Although this deciduous conifer now thrives in many American landscapes—especial-