|
The Dinosaur State Park Arboretum When dinosaurs first became numerous in the late Triassic Period, nearly all of the major groups of vascular plants except the angiosperms were in existence. Conifers, cycadophytes, ginkgoes, ferns, and large arborescent horsetails dominated the landscape. By the mid-Jurassic Period, conifers had become more diverse and many of their fossils have been assigned to modern families such as Araucariaceae, Pinaceae and Taxodiaceae. Angiosperm pollen and leaves first appeared in the fossil record about 140 million years ago in the early Cretaceous Period. By about 90 million years ago, several modern families of flowering plants are represented by good fossil material. These families include the Lauraceae (laurel), Magnoliaceae (magnolia), Platanaceae (sycamore), Buxaceae (box), and Calycantheaceae (sweet shrub). By the end of the Cretaceous Period, many modern plant families existed with the last dinosaurs, including:
Our goal is to grow representatives of as many of the Mesozoic Era plants families as we can on our zone 6 site. The initial plantings established a "backbone" of hardy conifers and then the collection was filled out with dwarf and slow-growing conifer cultivars. Currently, there are more than 200 different kinds of conifers in the collection. Recent plantings have focused on trees and shrubs from the Cretaceous angiosperm families. The largest gera collections are pine, juniper, charmaecyparis, arborvitae, and magnolia. Some of the more unusual species are:
|