Don’t you just love learning about dinosaurs? When my daughter was two years old her favourite word was "Triceratops" which is a pretty amazing word for a two-year old! Triceratops was a plant eating dinosaur and do you know that you may have some plants in your garden that are almost exactly the same as those that the dinosaurs ate?

The most ancient plants of all are the club mosses, ferns and horsetails. Horsetails (Equisetums) are very interesting plants, but because they are so tough, they can become very bad weeds, so you should not grow them anywhere in Australia. However there are two dinosaur plants that you can grow.

This tree is sometimes called the Maidenhead Fern Tree or the Duckfoot Tree because that is what the leaves are shaped like. The leaves turn yellow in autumn. It is a very tough tree and it is often used as a street tree in Asian cities such as Seoul and Tokyo because it can cope with air pollution very well. Ginkgo leaves have been found in fossils over 200 million years old. The plants were still around when the dinosaurs first appeared and they are still here now.

Cycads such as the Sago Palm developed after the Gingko and around the same time that the meat-eating dinosaurs first appeared. Cycads grow as a rosette of stiff fronds (see top). They are very slow-growing, but very handsome plants.

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When we think of plants we usually think of pretty, sweet smelling flowers that attract bees and butterflies. However there are some plants that could easily star in a horror movie! Some are really weird and do some pretty awful things to attract insects to pollinate their flowers or to provide them with extra food. While we might not like them, we have to realise that what they do might be a very good way of surviving and producing new plants to replace them when they die - and that, after all, is a plant’s main job.

1. Stink Lily (Dracunculus vulgaris)
This is a big plant that grows a bit like an Arum Lily. When it flowers it sends up a big dark red spathe with a sticky spadix (see right) that smells just like rotting meat. It can be smelt from a long way away. Blow flies are attracted and crawl over it looking for the dead body to lay their maggots in. As they move about they transfer pollen from flower to flower and this means that the flowers are fertilised and are able to produce seeds.

2. Pitcher Plant
These are strange-looking plants that are shaped like a tall vase with a lid. The lid of the plant has a nice smell like nectar and insects come to try to find the nectar to eat it. When they start going down into the vase, they find that it is very slippery and they fall down. When they try to fly back out there are nasty, sharp downward facing hairs that stop them escaping. When they get exhausted they fall down into the liquid at the bottom. This liquid then dissolves the bodies of the insects so that the plant can eat them!

3. Sundews
Sundews have lots of hairs over them. On the end of each hair is a drop of clear liquid that looks just like a dew drop. When insects stop for a nice cool drink, they find that the fluid is really sticky and they get stuck. Then the liquid digests them so the plant can eat them! EEEEUCH!

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There is one rule of gardening that everyone should follow - don't eat any plant or part of a plant unless you know for sure it is safe. Many common garden plants are poisonous so beware. Also, just because birds can eat fruits eg berries does NOT mean they are safe for humans. While bigger kids know not to put plants in their mouths, little kids often chew on all sorts of things, so keep an eye on your little brothers and sisters when you play.

There are some plants that are poisonous enough to kill you if you eat even a small amount. Luckily most of them taste VERY BAD. Don't even touch the following:

1. Oleander
2. The hard red and black seeds of the Crab's Eye creeper. Just one seed crushed is enough to kill a grown-up.
3. Daphne berries
4. Castor Oil Plant
5. Angel's Trumpets (Brugmansia)
6. Yellow Oleander (Cascabela)
7. Yellow berries of the White Cedar tree (Melia)
8. Arum Lilies and other arum-type lilies
9. Carolina Jessamine (Gelsemium)              
10. Foxgloves (see picture right)

1. Many bulbs are poisonous eg daffodils, tulips, jonquils, hyacinths if they are eaten. Never put bulbs anywhere where they might be mistaken for onions and never use them as play food.

2. Poisonous plants often have a milky sap, so if you see that, wash your hands straight away and don't touch.

3. Never eat or touch wild mushrooms. It can be very hard to tell which are safe and which are poisonous.

4. Just because we can eat some parts of a plant doesn't mean that all parts are safe to eat. For example, we can eat the stems of rhubarb, but the leaves are poisonous; we love apples and tomatoes but the leaves of these plants are poisonous too.

While this may all sound scary, it is all very simple. Don't put anything other than real food in your mouth and wash your hands well after gardening. It's as easy as that!

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In autumn it is easy to find the seeds of many plants. Plants have all sorts of interesting ways to make sure that their seeds are spread to somewhere that is a suitable place for them to grow. Some seeds are blown on the wind and have fluffy "sails" so they will be carried a long way. Some seeds have prickles that will get stuck in animals' fur and be transported to other places. Other seeds are inside fruit that birds and animals like to eat. The seeds are spread in their droppings. Maples do something very different with their seeds - they make them into mini-helicopters!

1. The seeds of all maple trees are contained inside pairs of seed coverings called samaras. A samara consists of a fine membrane covering a seed at one end and forming a wing at the other.

2. Every species of maple (there are 124 of them!) has a different kind of samara and this can be used to help identify the plants. (Do you know that yummy maple syrup comes from the sap of the Sugar Maple (Acer saccharum)? There is a Sugar Maple leaf on the Canadian flag.)

3. Samaras have a special feature. If you drop them, they will always spin like a helicopter rotor blade. If you are not very tall, you might need to stand on something higher to see how well they work.

4. When the samaras drop from the branches of tall maple trees they can twirl for very long distances. This means that the seeds can fly a long way away from the parent tree so that if they germinate they will be able to grow into a tree that won't have to complete with the parent tree for water, nutrients and sunlight. For us it just means good fun!

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