Understanding the petrified wood at the Tropical Paradise

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In addition to having a lot of plants, the Tropical Paradise, which is what I call my backyard garden here in Glendale, Arizona (a suburb of Phoenix), has a lot of rocks. Most of them are there just to give a nice background to the plants, and not attract a lot of attention, but I do have some petrified wood, which I've always found fascinating. I'll tell you what I know.

These rocks have been in the garden now for over twenty years, and other than knowing that they were given to me by a friend, all I know is that they're probably from the Triassic Era, which is when the huge petrified forest in Arizona, just north of me, was growing. That would mean that when they were actually live growing trees (conifers, by the way), they grew on Pangea, the giant supercontinent that existed before everything broke up to make the continents that we know now, about 200 million years ago.






Dinosaurs did exist back then, but nothing like the ones that I used to draw when I was a kid. When dinosaurs ruled the earth was a little later, during the Jurassic, and Cretaceous Periods. But reptiles did live during those times, smaller and more primitive, probably looking a lot more like the Dollar Store lizard that I put there a couple of years ago. It's attached with a tiny bit of Gorilla Glue, and to my surprise the dogs leave it alone.

Every once in a while I put some furniture polish on the petrified wood, to brighten it up a bit, but I really don't want shiny, artificial-looking stuff in the garden, and it fades fairly quickly. The lizard was a brighter green when I bought it, but I like the more muted color that it's acquired over the years of being outside in 100-degree-plus weather.

Welcome to Triassic Park!

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