#Metasequoia (dawn redwood) is hands down my favorite tree - a massive and stately conifer with deciduous foliage that goes golden-brown in autumn; now in spring it spreads out delicate feathery sprays, pale green and sweet-scented. Originally known to science only from fossils, it was a core constituent of Tertiary forests throughout the Northern Hemisphere. This narrative of its rediscovery in life, quietly persisting in a rural Chinese village, is stunningly vivid.
https://arboretum.harvard.edu/stories/reminiscences-of-collecting-the-type-specimens-of-metasequoia-glyptostroboides/