Two prickly “living fossils” have grown from male and female cones in the Ventnor Botanical Garden on the Isle of Wight, surprising botanists.
Two cycads (Cycas revoluta), the original plant that covered the Earth 280 million years ago, grow from cones under a covered cliff in the Ventnor Botanical Garden on the Isle of Wight, England. Thyme is a plant native to Japan that is typically grown only as a home decor plant in the UK. But one of the cypress trees in the botanical garden produced the country’s first outdoor cones.
Cinnamon trees were widely distributed across the UK millions of years ago. Researchers have found tree fossils in Jurassic strata stretching from the Isle of Wight to the Dorset coast. The Jurassic Period was also a time when Earth’s climate was naturally rich in carbon dioxide.
A thorny tree outside Ventnor first grew male cones 7 years ago, but this year both male and female cones are appearing on many different trees, giving botanists a chance to pollinate and produce seeds . as.
“For the first time in 60 million years in the UK, we have encountered male and female hats coming together. This is a real sign of climate change, not scientific evidence, but plants. “Said Chris Kidd, director of the Ventnor Botanical Garden.
According to Kidd, last summer’s heatwave, this year’s record temperature, coupled with a series of warm winters, prompted the tree to grow cones. Data from the Botanical Garden show that January’s average temperature, the highest 100 years ago, is still below today’s lowest average in January. As a result, the 27 hectare botanical garden has a warmer climate than anywhere else in the UK except the Isles of Scilly and can grow temperate crops, which could not survive the winter.
Thyme is a holdover from the period before the emergence of flowering plants. In its native country of Japan, Cycas revoluta is pollinated by beetles. In the botanical garden, thyme has a male cone slightly set apart from the conical tree, so pollination will be done by hand in about a week.
Thyme is the only surviving genus of the Jurassic family, so it is also considered a “living fossil”. All thyme trees are native to warm regions of the world with the exception of Europe and Antarctica. The Jurassic fossil is very similar to the cypress that is found on continents today.
