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그루안

The "Water Fir" Thought Extinct, and How It Came to Line a Damyang Road

Place · Metasequoia tree-lined road, Damyang-gun, Jeollanam-do (National Route 24, from Damyang-gun Office to Wonyul Junction in Geumseong-myeon)

On a November morning along a copper-red metasequoia avenue, a woman character in a coppery reddish-brown long coat, cream turtleneck, gray-brown pleated skirt and dark brown ankle boots rests her left hand lightly on a fluted large trunk and looks to the end of the road. Straight rows of roadside trees, feathery leafy twigs, a dirt road carpeted with fallen leaves, light mist and morning light are visible. This is a creative illustration based on records of the Damyang tree-lined road, not a photograph reproducing the exact layout of the actual site.
The tree drawn as a character (AI-made illustration)

Visit this tree

Damyang Metasequoia Road

At a glance

Tree
Damyang Metasequoia Road
Age · era
Discovered 1941, seeds distributed 1948, introduced to Korea in the 1950s (varies by source), planted in Damyang 1972, road-widening threats in 2000 and 2009, National Forest Cultural Asset 2015

Story

The Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University says the metasequoia (in English, Dawn Redwood) had generally been thought to have gone extinct millions of years ago. In the winter of 1941, Professor T. Kan of the National University's forestry department, on his way from Hubei to Sichuan, saw a large deciduous tree by the roadside at Mau-tao-chi in Wan County, which the locals called "shui-sa", or "water fir". The Missouri Botanical Garden records that the tree was known from the fossil record and that a wild specimen was discovered in 1941. In January and February 1948, seeds arrived at the Arnold Arboretum twice; after keeping some, the arboretum divided the rest into at least 600 packets and sent them to gardens, arboretums and universities around the world. In Korea, in 1972 Damyang-gun planted 1,300 five-year-old trees along a 5 km stretch of National Route 24 from the county office to Wonyul Junction in Geumseong-myeon, creating today's metasequoia road (Korea Tourism Organization). The Seoul Shinmun (2 October 2000) reported that the road was designated a model street-tree road by the Ministry of Home Affairs in the early 1970s, and that in 2000 the roadside trees along about 1 km from Namsan-ri to Hakdong-ri in Damyang-eup were threatened with loss by the Iksan Regional Construction and Management Administration's widening of the Gwangju-Sunchang road, but after residents' protests the trees slated for felling were cut from 178 to 64 along a stretch of about 200 m. The Hankook Ilbo (2018) sums up that the route was changed at that time to save 114 trees, and that when the Damyang-Sunchang road was widened to four lanes in 2009, the 37 trees slated for felling were reduced to 4 through consultation between residents and environmental groups. The tree columnist Ko Gyu-hong (2010) wrote that residents formed the "Citizens' Alliance to Save the Metasequoias" and protected the trees. The road won the Grand Prize in the street-forest category in 2002 and the top prize in the "100 Beautiful Roads of Korea" in 2006 (Kyunghyang Shinmun, 2015), and in 2015 became the first tree-lined road to be designated a National Forest Cultural Asset; the Korea Forest Service cited its significance as "the first tree-lined road in Korea made with seedlings produced in a nursery". In 2011, when Damyang-gun gave notice of an ordinance to charge admission for 1.8 km (470 trees) in front of Hakdong Village, the need for management clashed with objections to "making money off a walking path" (Seoul Shinmun). The route by which the tree reached Korea differs by source: the Damyang road signboard names Dr. Hyeon Sin-gyu, while a Chonnam National University signboard introduces one of the saplings brought from Japan by Jeong Ha-do in 1952 as the mother tree of this road (Hwang Ho-taek column). The film "May 18" (Hwaryeohan Hyuga) begins on this road (same column).

Sources — 12 records and legends

Records are facts written in the sources. Legends are stories handed down over time. Sources are in Korean.

Record

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