Excelsior District Improvement Association
Spring has sprung at the San Francisco Botanical Garden at the Strybing Arboretum in Golden Gate Park and Admission is still free for now! Directions on how to get there
Don't miss our own group of living fossils growing between the evergreen collection and the native plant garden - The Dawn Redwoods.
“Botanists believed the dawn redwood had become extinct 2 million years ago.
But in the 1940’s, Chinese scientists were amazed to discover the tree growing in eastern Sichuan Province. Metasequoia glyptostroboides became a famous example of a ‘living fossil,’ an ancient species that has survived
nearly unchanged.”
—Except from Rarest of the Rare: Stories Behind the Treasures at the Harvard Museum of Natural History
The San Francisco Botanical Garden is an outdoor museum and a repository for the conservation of plants from around the world. It contains a living botanical treasure, The Dawn Redwood. Once also a California native know only from fossils. It has come home and was brought to San Francisco soon after the discovery of living specimens in the 1940's. Our Dawn Redwoods are over 60 years old.