Plants of the dinosaur's

Walking by the River Nairn this morning was another of those sometimes magical experiences. It was raining. So, whats new? But, being Sunday it was silent. When you stood still and listened, all you could hear was the rain in the canopy and the river tumbling over the rocks. Not a sound of the 21st century intruded. It got me thinking of that old conundrum, "If a tree falls in he forest and there is no one to hear, does it make a noise"?

Walking a little further I saw this fern glistening from the falling rain and remembered that they are some of our oldest plants. Dinosaurs, (deinos, terrible), (sauros, lizard), roamed this ancient land somewhere between 230 and 65 million years ago. Ages in time are sometimes just too big to comprehend. Their closest living relatives today are crocodiles and birds. Fortunately there are no croc's in the River Nairn (or none that I know of) but pick up a feather and think of 'archaeopteryx', a primative bird from about 160 million years ago. It was about the size of a crow and had feathers and wings. In many respects its skeleton was reptilian (teeth and long bony tail) and was very much like some of the meat eating dinosaurs of the time.

This plants ancestors would have seen all that. A magical thought.