Dinosaur State Park Arboretum

A Pinetum Among an Aboretum
Dinosaur State Park Arboretum/Pinetum
February 2024

For my page on the Dinosaur State Park Museum, go here. If you just want the Trackway National Natural Landmark, go here. And if you’re here for the trails, go here.

Many, many years ago when I listed the arboretums I felt were worthy of this esteemed website, I learned that the plural of arboretum is arboreta. Which, really, is what I’d expect it to be. But back then I noticed something called a “pinetum,” and specifically, that there was a worthwhile pinetum at Dinosaur State Park in Rocky Hill. Now, in the context of this page and the preceding paragraph, you can certainly figure out what a pinetum is.

A decade later, no one uses the word “pinetum” anymore.

Well, except one person…

JUNE 10, 2022
A Walk Through My Pinetum

This time of year, there is always so much to see around my Bedford, New York farm – everything is looking so lush and green.

As many of you know, I am a serious and very passionate gardener, and over the years have designed many gardens around my home. One area that is constantly evolving is my pinetum – an arboretum of pine trees and other conifers. I first planted it almost 15-years ago in a field behind my large Equipment Barn and near my weeping willow grove. This collection has grown extremely well, and I continue to add additional specimens every year.

Good ol’ Martha Stewart. Love her.

And her pinetum is probably better than the state-funded one at Dinosaur State Park. (And to be clear, they’ve added some non-pinetum trees here as well.)

It’s located all around the museum building and is just sort of… there. It was established to showcase plants that have a direct link to those that existed during the Age of Dinosaurs. Some plantings include unusual species while others contain familiar trees and shrubs. Today, it contains more than 200 species of trees.

For clarity, it’s true that the majority of conifers are evergreen (they retain foliage for a full year or more), the word “conifer” is not synonymous with “evergreen.” There is a small group of conifers that grow and drop a new set of leaves every year, just like maples, birches, or other deciduous trees. In fact, there are five genera of deciduous conifers (Larix, Metasequoia, Psuedolarix, Taxodium and Glyptostrobus). Larches and Dawn Redwoods are two that I know of that are in Connecticut.

Oh you want more plant biology? Good.

When dinosaurs first became numerous in the late Triassic Period, nearly all of the major groups of vascular plants except the angiosperms were in existence. Conifers, cycadophytes, ginkgoes, ferns and large arborescent horsetails dominated the landscape. By the mid-Jurassic Period, conifers had become more diverse and many of their fossils have been assigned to modern families such as Araucariaceae, Pinaceae and Taxodiaceae. Angiosperm pollen and leaves first appeared in the fossil record about 140 million years ago in the early Cretaceous Period. By about 90 million years ago, several modern families of flowering plants are represented by good fossil material. These families include the Lauraceae (laurel), Magnoliaceae (magnolia), Platanaceae (sycamore), Buxaceae (box) and Calycantheaceae (sweet shrub). By the end of the Cretaceous Period, many modern plant families existed with the last dinosaurs.

Well there you go. It’s that last bit that includes the angiosperms (generally deciduous trees). The initial plantings established a “backbone” of hardy conifers and then the collection was filled out with dwarf and slow-growing conifer cultivars.

I strolled around the exhibit center to check out the trees. It really is very nicely thought out and put together. Some unusual species include Cedar-of-Lebanon, Giant-sequoia, Incense-cedar, Plumyew, Monkey Puzzle Tree, Hibba Arborvitae, Alpine Totara, Lacebark Pine, Modoc Cypress, and more.

Everyone loves a Monkey Puzzle Tree.