By Stacy Lee
The newest addition to Descanso Gardens in La Cañada Flintridge will take visitors back to the age when dinosaurs walked the earth.
Ancient Forest features plants that have been around since the Jurassic and Cretaceous Periods including a new collection of cycads – the oldest living seed plants – consisting of nearly 175 plants representing 66 species.
“These plants are very mysterious and old,” Descanso Gardens Executive Director David R. Brown said. “They’ve been on earth for 250-plus million years in essentially their same form.”
La Cañada residents Frederick and Katia Elsea donated the cycad collection to Descanso Gardens.
“The project started last fall with a phone call from one of our neighbors who asked us if we would be interested in taking his collection of cycads,” Brown said. “He was planning to move from California to the East Coast where the climate is not supportive of cycads.”
Brown said when he saw the vast collection, he thought to himself, “We have the perfect place to put them.”
This perfect place is nestled in a grove of towering redwood trees at the lowest, wettest part of the garden.
“The section of the garden, now named the Ancient Forest, has always been a magical part of the garden to me,” Descanso Gardens Chief Operating Officer and San Marino resident Juliann Rooke said. “Now more visitors will experience the magic of that space as there is a specific reason to go to that area.”
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