Newsday (Nassau Edition) from Hempstead, New York • 234

GARDENS A Trek Through Evolution At Brooklyn Botanic new conservatory you cap walk around the globe and back a few billion years In the tropical greenhouse: Stephen Tim Kerry Barlnger and Thomas Hoffman below the three new pavilions By Anne Raver STOOD IN A'steamy land Water dripped all around us but there were no leafy green plants anywhere At our feet gray-green stumps the chalky conglomerates of sand and primeval organisms poked out of the swamp We were setting out down the Trail of Evolution which began 35 billion years ago I had one wish ask to go back and see what that land looked said Stephen Tim vice president of Brooklyn Botanic Garden and one of the key minds behind the Steinhardt Conservatory The conservatory is the star of the $25-million expansion project and it opens today The Trail of Evolution is the path that leads to the heart of the matter: three glass pavilions housing three different environments a tropical rain forest a desert and the warm temperate zones of both the Old and New World There is also an aquatic house that includes two pools one shallow one deep with windows below ground so that visitors can gaze at the submerged plants thriving in a scoured -out riverbed And for bonsai lovers there is a whole museum of 300 to 500 specimens First go back a few billion years land was barren said Tim much more than a clay mud bank It was flat aiid wet And warm with a lot of humidity and moisture The atmosphere was unbreathable full of sulphur fumes There was very little oxygen which was just forming in the waters No human could have There were violent thunderstorms And it was the electricity from these storms scientists theorize that literally Bparked the atmosphere into the amino adds that are the building blocks of life We were in a sense still swimming in the oceans that covered the Earth first organisms were all delicate single cells but some of these cells took on Urn continued was being oxidized so we know by inference that oxygen was being produced by And that oxygen began to form the first thin layer of ozone which would protect the first plants and animals that ventured onto land from the ultraviolet rays The first animal cells were also single cells and these too lived in marine waters These single cells plant and animal existed side by side for about 2 billion yews the beginning it took a long time for a single cell to join up with other said Tim was a really complex big But after a couple billion years the ocean got sort of crowded And as land emerged anything that could get out did It was sort of like the first suburbanites fleeing the city Finally we reached the seed-bearers and the flowering plants that took over the Earth a mere 100 million years ago Plants with spores which need water in order for the sperm to get to the egg had to take the back seat plant that could get away from spores to protected seeds which can live under any conditions had a great explained Tim developed in parallel so there were plenty of pollinators The flowering plants could exploit every niche of the Earth because of their you could put a skin around your body so you dry out and develop roots to suck up the water you could move onto said Tim We Btared down at a rubbery-looking plant with leafless simple branches a spore-bearer allied to the fern family It grew beside a fossil of a plant that was its mirror image and existed billions of years ago We stepped up our pace a bit and traveled three billion years to stop and stare at the enormous root of a club moss It existed 300 million years ago It had no predators and no competitors for sunshine or water so it could grow as high as 150 feet with a trunk 4 feet in diameter Tim gave the root an affectionate pat It as well as many of the plant fossils here is actually manmade by Tim and his staff WALKED on to the carboniferous period when vast amounts of vegetation were buried under shale and rock compressed into coal The earth was dryer 160 million years ago the big mosses and horsetails gave way to qycads and plants with tough palmlike leaves Conifers began to appear and dinosaurs genetic We had traveled 35 billion years in a mere 100 feet and Tim now led us into the three adjoining pavilions that house plant worlds thousands of miles apart The total effect this multi-environment has on the traveler is one of great profundity infused with a childlike awe Bodes that look as real as any rockface in the desert or the Mediterranean are actually molded concrete reinforced with fiberglass or hand-carved cement that has been sprayed onto steel and mesh forms The waterways and riverbeds the caves and cliffs the epiphytic trees are all manmade by the Larson Co of Tucson Ariz Tim wants children and adults alike to stand in the soaring rain forest surrounded by plants that have supplied us with medicine food coffee tea spices wax and lumber and elegant fragrances such as jasmine He wants us to wander into the warm dryer world of the Mediterranean and realize how something as simple as papyrus changed the world many things happen in the world because people are said Tim rain the destruction of the rain forest the spoiling of our waterways But we want to educate people in a friendly happy way not forcing things down their throats" And the conservatory do that at all It opens eyes Ill kY THURSDAY MAY 19 1988 At HOITie3 xonFestival odendron Festival today My 22 si Chirk Garden Al- Jestbuty Garden Old Westbuiy? Fields Ar bpretum Oyster Bay lflJ T94-4222 fbrinformation on garden tour8 workshope plant sales and plant clinics Tonight tour dean rhododendron gar deninLocustVaUeylmeet at the Old Westbuiy The Steinhardt Conservatory is open Tuesday through Sunday from 10 am to 5:30 pm General admission $2 senior citizens and children 3 to 12 years old $1 Starting June 12 the Long Island Railroad will offer a discount package which includes round-trip fare admission to the Steinhardt Conservatory the Japanese Garden and the Brooklyn Museum which are all within walking distance of one another Take the train to Atlantic Terminal in Brooklyn then take a No 2 or 3 train to Eastern Parkway For information call (718) 622-4433 ill.