204 



PALEOBOTANY 



Ralph W. Chaney 



Redwoods Around the Pacific Basin 



Reprinted (abridged) with the permission of 

 the author and publisher from Pacific Dis- 

 covery 1(5) :4-14, 1948. 



On October 10, 1769, members of 

 the Portola Expedition first sighted the 

 redwoods of North America on the 

 California coast near the present town 

 of Watsonville. More than a century 

 and three-quarters was to elapse before 

 the discovery of redwoods in Asia. 



During these years, fossil redwoods 

 were found at many localities over the 

 northern hemisphere. At first the leafy 

 shoots, whose impressions were found 

 in the rocks of France, were thought 

 to be relatives of the yew and were 

 called Taxites. With the discovery of 

 fossil cones in Switzerland, the similar- 

 ity of these fossils to the coast red- 

 wood. Sequoia sempervirens, of Cali- 

 fornia, was noted by the great Swiss 

 palcobotanist, Oswald Heer. In the 

 past centur)' other fossil leaves, cones 

 and wood of the redwood t}pe have 

 been found throughout most of the 

 northern hemisphere, and all of them 

 have been assigned to the genus Se- 

 quoia. 



Those of us who are concerned 

 with the history of Cenozoic plants, 

 covering the latest sixtv million years 

 of geologic time, have long been aware 

 that some of the fossils we have called 

 Sequoia have cones different from 

 those of our living coast redwood. 

 These fossil cones are attached to 

 elongate stalks on which there are no 

 needles, and they have been considered 

 a species distinct from the immediate 

 ancestors of the coast redwood. It was 

 not until 1941 that the Japanese palco- 

 botanist, Shigeru Miki, presented the 

 evidence for referring cones of this t^pe 

 to a new genus, to which he gave the 

 name Metasequoia. During the war we 

 learned nothing about the progress of 

 science in Japan and it was not until 

 the summer of 1948 that I had an op- 

 portunity to read Miki's paper. By that 

 time much had happened. 



The first major event was the visit 

 of forester Tsang Wang to the village 

 of Mo-tao-chi, more than a hundred 



