The Wooster Tree Ring Lab has just published a paper with Franklin and Marshall College and The Ohio State University on the climate response of the Dawn Redwood tree. The study site is the beautiful Secrest Arboretum at the OARDC – OSU Wooster Campus. The upshot is that these remarkable and fast-growing trees are clearly doing well and as long as the increase in precipitation that Northeast Ohio is receiving keeps pace with the summer warming they should continue to do well. Why not plant more of these beautiful trees as they thrive, sequester carbon, and provide many other ecosystem services.
The senior author is Lauren Vargo, who is now a glaciologist research scientist at the Antarctic Research Centre in Wellington, Australia. Lauren did much of this work while an undergraduate at Wooster. Lauren is also the recent lead author on this Nature Climate Change contribution. Great thanks to Lauren also for sharing here research this summer.
Here is the technical abstract of the Dawn Redwood paper:
ABSTRACT
Figure above shows the tree-ring record from a stand of 19 Dawn Redwood trees (upper panel A). The lower blue and red graph (B) is the climate response of the trees – temperature (red bars) is strongly negatively correlated with summer (June and July) temperatures and with February temperature. The summer relationship makes sense as hot summers require higher evapotranspiration demands. The negative correlation with winter is hypothesized to be linked to warming winters leading to less snow cover leaving roots exposed and vulnerable to damaging frosts. This negative relationship may go away as warming continues and frosts become less frequent.
Figure above shows three photos of cores from Dawn Redwood – note the narrow 1988 drought ring (white dots).
The College of Wooster Paleoclimate class mulls around the Dawn Redwood stand.
Another great photo of Dawn Redwoods – they are deciduous conifers so this photo in the early spring before growth.
Many thanks to the Secrest Arboretum for permission to core these impressive trees. We greatly appreciate the support of Jason Veil the Curator of the Arboretum.
Congratulations on the new paper, Vargo et al.! Very good to see such hard work make it to a publication. I learned here, among other things, that living Metasequoia were found in 1943 in China for the first time. That was one of the darkest years of WWII for China, so I imagine there’s an interesting story about this discovery.
Are these trees in wooster particularly special or just local and chose them? I am in columbus and am growing giant sequoias because I thought dawn redwoods were not as fit to grow here. Are there a lot of these in ohio? Should I get any random seeds or are seeds from trees already successfully growing in ohio better
Hi Jordan,
Dawn Redwoods grow well in Ohio with the high precip. and warm temperatures that can log a meter a year. The challenge is to plant them assuming they will grow 1 meter per year….The best place to obtain one is at the Secrest Arboretum (OARDC in Wooster), they have occasional plant sales. I have no recommendation for seeds, but I have seen they are available.
Good luck and be sure to document just how fast they do grow – with increasing precipitation and temperature they love Ohio.