I seem to recall hearing they grow well in Houston, but I'm not 100% sure.

All Zone 9 climates are not equal. Approximately, where are you. Annual precipitation matters too.

I live in Houston and am trying to grow some redwoods in pots currently. Would love to see your dawn redwood. Where are you located?

It does fine here (9b, Sonoma County, CA)

Houston gets a fair amount of rain most years. Am I correct to say compared to StLouis its a similar total but more apt to be in a wet /dry cycle from tropical storms then drought instead of our weekly tbunderstorms?

Here we almost never have watering restrictions for example.

Now my tree was not used to this, but I think it was the summer of 2012 wben we had record heat and drought conditions comparable to a couple dust bowl era summers. the 100 degree temps and months with 1/4 inch of rain or whatever defoliated my tree in late July if I recall. Even that did not give me watering restrictions so I just watered it, alot.

Two summers of that and no supplemental water could do bad things to it IMO.

I’ve lived here in Houston most my life... what I observe is that most of the year we get consistent rain (once or twice a week) in the summer we have the daily thunderstorms that pop up and can drown you in your front yard and not touch your backyard. Super spotty.

Then, typically, in late July and August it starts to dry out and everything cooks for 6 weeks. But that’s also the time a hurricane can come in and “Harvey” the area.

we did have a ton of trees that either died or were severely weakened during the 2010-2011 drought.

Does anyone know where “ltruett” is located? Want to see the dawn redwood!

To OP... did your dawn redwoods make it?

Dawn Redwoods can grow in zone 10 California, they just need a lot of water during the Summer. I've even seen some Coastal Redwoods growing in botanical gardens.

Also if you go to Guangzhou, China (zone 10) they plant Dawn Redwoods in parks (but of course Guangzhou has a lot more humidity and rain than most parts of California).

"even"? The native range of coastal redwood is zone 9 and 10 in California.

Anyhow, not sure why Metasequoia was ever assigned "-8". They are known to grow in plenty of mild zone 10 locations like SE AU or LA. The dash anything designations are often, thought not always, quite useless. A lot of more sensible nurseries just give a single hardiness zone, or use a range to represent uncertainty. The system was never intended to cover winter chilling requirements or heat tolerance or whatever else people think the higher number means.

Roger,

I am in Cypress (290/99 area). At the moment there isn't much too see as it is mostly bare. It generally looks best early summer so you are welcome to come see it then.

Does DR have any appreciable chill requirement?

As far as chilling, some PNW zone 9 areas get twice the winter chilling hours as some zone 7 areas in the East do.

Ltruett

is your redwood budding yet? If you don’t mind, email me at rogercullins “at” gmail

thanks!