Prehistoric!

Back in the fifties one of my heroes - scientist and thinker Willy Ley - wrote an amazing book called 'Dragons in Amber'.

This concerned itself with plants and animals that have somehow managed to survived numerous extinction crises and remain unchanged until the present day. Naturally it included predictable organisms such as King Crabs, Coelocanths and Brachiopods, but, as a ten-year old, I was most intrigued by this paragraph: (which I paraphrase!)

'If (in my porch) I had a terrarium in which were five small but growing dinosaurs, I wouldn't have a quiet minute in the day. Instead I have a large flower pot in which are growing five small Ginkgo trees: survivors of the forest in which the dinosaurs roamed'

I've had a fascination with prehistoric plants ever since I read this and my house and garden contain examples of as many different types as I can find! Here are a few:

 

 

Ginkgo

Horsetail

Magnolia

Metasequoia

Wollemi Pine

Cycads

Norfolk Island Pine (Araucaria)

Chilean Pine (Araucaria)