I, Lepidodendron: The Towering Tree of the Ancient Forests 🌳✨

I am ( Lepidodendron ) one of the towering giants of the ancient forests! 🌍🌿 Over 300 million years ago, during the Carboniferous Period, I stood tall among other strange and magnificent plants, reaching up to 100 feet (30 meters) into the sky. My thick, scaly bark helped protect me, and my towering height allowed me to capture sunlight and thrive in the swampy forests of my time. 🌲✨

But I wasn’t like the trees you see today. I wasn’t even a real tree—I was a giant club moss, and my scaly bark looked like a pattern of diamond-shaped leaf scars. These scales gave me the name lep 👏 i 👏 do 👏 den 👏 dron 👏 a name derived from Greek words meaning "scale tree" . 🌳🔍 My ancestors were tiny mosses, but I grew into one of the tallest plants on Earth, creating vast forests that stretched across the land.

My world was a place of towering plants, dense swamps, and humid air. Beneath my branches, giant insects like dragonflies and millipedes crawled and flew. 🦋🌿 The air was rich in oxygen, allowing these creatures to grow much larger than they do today. I, created myself a mini ecosystem that provided shade, shelter, and life to many creatures.

Instead of growing thicker like modern trees, I grew tall and fast, sending roots deep into the swampy soil. My leaves were long and thin, like grass, and when they fell, they left behind the beautiful diamond-shaped patterns on my trunk. 🌿✨ Unlike modern trees that live for centuries, my life was short—only around 10 to 15 years—but I grew quickly, towering like a skyscraper over the swampy forests during my lifetime.

When I died, I didn’t just disappear. Over millions of years, the remains of plants like me were buried deep underground, transforming into the coal that humans found. I became a part of the energy that powered the world for so long, even though I’ve been gone for millions of years. 🦴⛏️

Fossils of my bark and branches are found today, and humans marvel at the intricate patterns of my scales, wondering about the strange world I once inhabited. They’ve learned so much about me from these fossils—how I lived, how I grew, and how I helped shape the ancient forests.

🌳 Have you ever wondered what it would be like to grow in a world full of giant plants and creatures, reaching for the sky while shaping the Earth beneath you? The next time you see a piece of coal or hear about fossils, think of me—Lepidodendron, the ancient plant that helped create the world as we know it. 🌿✨

I-narrative stories are best told aloud, allowing children to fully engage their imagination and connect deeply with the subject. Sometimes, we use charts or visual aids to spark even more curiosity and understanding. I tailor these stories because of my passion for storytelling and my desire to connect children with the world around them. Through stories, children can explore nature, history, art, biology, music, geometry, language, geography and the wonders of the universe in a way that feels memorable and alive.

P.S. When telling this story , do not reveal the star right away, instead invite children to listen carefully and try to find the star with the help of the timeline in front of them.

With Montessori joy,
Vanina 😊