Trees.

[Caran]

I live in the Forest of Dean as some of you may remember. I was out in the forest today, looking around at all the trees, I got to wonder, where did they all come from. I know they grow from a seed, but where would the first seed have come from. Or is this another chicken and egg question?

[gness]

I often feel the same way about men......:-(

[Mamyalynne]

Seeds can be distributed by birds and mammals and the wind, also the Forest was used in Medieval times for a hunting ground and timber source - so likely some human intervention to propagate too.

[sunny-dave]

Gness - woman was made from man's rib - god knows what which part of what was used to make man ...

[Caran]

Yes Mamya but where did the first seeds come from. They need a tree to produce a seed to pollinate, but the seed needs a tree to produce it. So what came first?

[Mamyalynne]

From the Primordial soup Caran as we all did I expect.

[sunny-dave]

Is that carrot and coriander, mamya?

[Mamyalynne]

It is.

[Mamyalynne]

Found this for you though..


//The world's earliest plants were a few centimetres high, consisting of ferns and mosses. The plants werestemless, and the earth's climate was Equatorial. Around 400 million years ago, in the so-called Devonian Period, plants began to form stems, and thus the first stemmed plants emerged. As the plant life adapted and competed for air, the stems grew longer, and by the middle of the D. period, the luxuriant Paleozoic forests spread across the globe, with huge horsetail plains, clubmosses and enormous ferns reaching 100ft high. Conifers "soon" joined them, having eventually evolved to the tree-like structures we know today, with root systems, vascular growth and secondary growth.

To conclude, there was never, so far as we can know, an actual moment when the first single tree suddenly appeared or began to grow. All over the world, lush forests gradually grew, with the first trees as we know them today appearing around the mid Devonian Period, circa 400-350 million years ago. //

[Mamyalynne]

From here- good bedtime reading...


http://www.uni-muenster.de/GeoPalaeontologie/Palaeo/Palbot/ewald0.htm

[Caran]

Thank you Mamya, very interesting.

[Mamyalynne]

It is isn't it - so often we fail to question the things we see every day until suddenly as you did, a thought pops into your mind.

[mikey4444]

Caran...I drove through the Forest last week and there were millions of snowdrops ! How lucky you are to live there !