Rare redwood hiding in plain sight at the Healdsburg Plaza

Not long ago I was looking at the current exhibit in the , about the of summers past, when the docent-on-duty said to me, “Did you know there’s a Dawn Redwood in the Plaza?” Not only did I not know, I told him, but I was keenly interested: the Dawn Redwood is almost a tree of legend, a mythical ancestor of the California redwoods long thought to be extinct.

The species thrived as one of the pioneer conifers from about 80 million years ago. Metasequoia glyptostroboides is the only deciduous conifer in the world that loses its needles every winter -- and only one of three trees known as redwoods. The others are the Coast Redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) and the Giant Redwood (Sequoiadendron giganteum) of the Sierra Nevada, more familiar forest friends by far.

It was first discovered as a Mesozoic fossil in 1941, and was therefore presumed extinct – the Mesozoic ended 70 million years ago. But in 1943 a small grove was discovered in Moudao, Hubei, China, and other forest discoveries proved it still vital, though rare enough to be considered endangered. Still, from extinct to endangered sounds like a success story.

Of course, the Dawn Redwood in the Healdsburg Plaza is not a great “discovery,” as if stranded here by the currents and eddies of the Russian River from time immemorial. In fact it was planted here, in 1953, after being gifted to the city as a potted plant. Dawn Redwoods became something of a fad after World War II, and ambitious horticulturalists planted groves of the ornamental tree worldwide.

There’s even the Crescent Ridge Dawn Redwoods Preserve in North Carolina, founded in 1995 as a place to see this tree in a natural state in numbers up to 5,000 trees. Don’t rush to see it, however: the park is scheduled to open in 2035. Redwoods, as we know, take their time.

When I heard the news about the Dawn Redwood I hustled the block and a half from the Museum to the Plaza, and spotted the tree right off: it was at the southwest corner entrance, to the right as you walk into the park, behind the young boy holding the flag. It was mid-January, and it was the only redwood standing without any needles.

If I hadn’t known better, I might have thought it had fallen prey to a beetle, moth or fungus, some blight that had killed it. The ground was carpeted with small rusty redwood needles, and the spiny branches bare against the winter sky.

But the north side of the exposed trunk was thick with moss, true to the adage, creating a striking obelisk of luminous green reaching up from the ground to the sky.

There are another 15 or so kinds of trees in the Healdsburg Plaza, making this small square block a worthy if little-appreciated showpiece for our town. There are several Coast Redwoods, including one at the other corner of the pathway -- planted in 1924 according to its sign. A couple of dramatic Canary Island Date Palms surround the Plaza in stone planters, a Deodar Cedar opposite Copperfield’s, an Incense Cedar at Matheson and Healdsburg, plus Pin Oak, Ginkgo, Colorado Blue Spruce and Formosa Gum and more.

Given the high number of ornamental trees, introduced for their aesthetic value, it’s not surprising that the Healdsburg Plaza of today bears little resemblance to the oak and madrone forest that the first European visitors to the region found. Harmon Heald built his first cabin and general store near a “beautiful shady grove” which he later made the centerpiece of his town grid, forever cementing the Plaza as Healdsburg’s focus.

The  trees of the Plaza were talked about even from the outset. One legend holds that Cyrus Alexander hanged the carcass of a bear from a large madrone tree on this site in the 1840s, quite possibly the same madrone on the northwest corner of the Plaza that a later visitor commented on and even drew a picture of.

“The madrona too, with its vivid green foliage, bright red stems and exquisite outline, is a marvel of grace and loveliness.  One, in the principle street of the town, towering and spreading far above the highest buildings, is singularly picturesque and venerable.”  (Albert Dean Richardson, Beyond the Mississippi, 1862.)

Though there are no madrones on the Plaza now, there are plenty of these smooth red-barked trees on Fitch Mountain and on the slopes above Lake Sonoma.

Between 1857 and 1867, however, many of the madrones and stately live oaks of the Plaza area were removed or damaged by the growing town and its inhabitants, both human and livestock. The result was the fencing of the Plaza in 1873, but public sentiment no longer valued these old growth trees, and by March 1874 “a citizen petition forced the removal of the ancient oaks,” according to Hannah Clayborn’s History of Healdsburg website.

Over the next 90 years, the trees and bushes planted in the Plaza lacked focus, passing through an Italianate period of sculpted cypress and a “tropical” period with orange trees (possibly bred by Luther Burbank) and the planting of Canary Island Date Palms, now four dramatically tall trees that palms over the fountain area in the heart of the Plaza.

It wasn’t until 1960, at about the same time the was torn down and a newer, much more modest building put in its place, that serious civic attention once again turned to the Plaza.  Healdsburg native Burton Litton, who had attended SRJC, UC Berkeley and then Harvard, was called upon to design a plan for the Plaza.

The landscape architect, by then a professor at Berkeley, incorporated both the established redwoods and date palms and added a number of decorative ornamentals to turn the Plaza into a arboreal park. It can’t be a coincidence that the tranquil fecundity of his still-standing landscape design drew its inspiration from his own Russian River childhood.

Take a few minutes to look around next time you’re hurrying through the Plaza. Several of the trees have descriptive signs, and several more have little numbers on redwood badges at their base. Obviously these trees are catalogued and cared for, possibly because Healdsburg has its own City Arborist, Matthew Thompson, who doubles as Parks Superintendent.

But what of the signs, and numbers? There must be a guide somewhere, I thought, but after some searching the only resource I could find was a 8-page laser jet printed, hand-folded flier, “Tree Walk of Healdsburg -- Third Edition, Spring 2006.” It was an informative little booklet, but I was surprised it was so insubstantial and hard to find.

“It’s meant to be a self-guided tour,” said Thompson. “In the third edition we expanded it to include the cherry trees up Matheson and others in some of the older neighborhoods.”  

While the earlier version was printed at some cost, the current one just exists on the city file server as a document-on-demand, to be downloaded and printed out by whichever office wants some copies. After some searching I found a PDF of the guide on the city’s website, and include it in this article’s gallery.

 “It should be at the Museum, and the ,” said Thompson. “I haven’t heard from the for awhile, it used to be there too.”

I asked about the Dawn Redwood, saying “It’s all coming out in bright green now.”

“Like it does every year,” said Thompson. A rare tree with reliable habits, somewhere near the center of Healdsburg.