Dinosaur garden stroll
Visitors explore the Ancient Forest
You can find cycads, ferns, and more
A close-up look at ferns
Blooming Leucospermum in spring
Prehistoric plants
Descanso Gardens’ Ancient Forest is teeming with prehistoric plants from an age when dinosaurs wandered the world and the Earth’s oceans and continents looked vastly different from today.
Oldest plant species on the planet
Some of the ancient plant species that persist today survived millions of years relatively unchanged even as the geography and animal life around them experienced dramatic shifts. Descanso’s cycads give our visitors a peek at some of the earliest types of flora on Earth.
Did you know?
Many of the plants in this region evolved well before flowers. In fact, flowering plants are “newbies” in the plant world — they first appeared in the Jurassic period about 175 million years ago.
Plant list
See a list of our Ancient Forest plants