Overheard a kid at the arboretum call a fern a dinosaur, and honestly?
Had to share this because it cracked me up all week. I was at the Denver Botanic Gardens last Saturday and this little kid pointed at a staghorn fern and yelled 'look mom, a dinosaur!' I laughed at first, but then I realized he wasn't totally wrong since ferns have been around for over 300 million years, way before flowers existed. It made me appreciate how tough and ancient these plants really are, even the ones I just walk past at the nursery. Anyone else get a new respect for a plant after some random comment like that?
Read somewhere that the tree fern in New Zealand has been basically unchanged for like 180 million years. Kid's onto something, that staghorn is practically a living fossil.