A Worldwide Survey of Cultivated Metasequoia glyptostroboides Hu and Cheng(Taxodiaceae) from 1947 to 2007

Since the first group of seeds sent out from China in December 1947,the famous ’living fossil’,Metasequoia glyptostroboides Hu and Cheng,has been cultivated in the world for sixty years.The worldwide survey has been conducted in the past five years through requests at www.metasequoia.org,special announcement in professional journals,citations from various publications,direct correspondences by emails,personal measurement,and herbarium consultation as well as internet searches.The survey yielded 2535 accessions from nearly fifty countries in every continent.Besides most popular in Europe and N.America,this tree has also been successfully cultivated in Argentina,Australia,Chile,India,Japan,the Koreas,Mexico,Nepal,New Zealand,South Africa,Thailand,Turkey and Zimbabwe.The best performance of growth is in the USDA Plant Hardiness Zones 5-9 in North America and Europe as well as the similar area in East Asia.The tallest individual is about 38 meters in height,and the largest is about 6.2 meters in girth.The details of every accession,both in private property and in public institutions around the world,including place cultivated,recent size of height and circumference,and introduction information if available,have been summarized,with further cultivation issues discussed.