waiting,
I think those plants died out with the trilobites! However, to be consistent with Genesis the special creation of all plants must have occurred on the same Creative Day, right?
I seem to recall that the Society once proposed that maybe plants used hydrogen for phtosynthesis instead of sunlight. I can't recall the exact reference but I do remember (as an early teenager) putting a plant in a bell jar with an atmosphere of hydrogen in a dark cupboard to see if it would work. The poor thing was dead in days. That experience put me off biology and my then dream of becoming a veterinarian: it was bad enough killing plants let alone rats and cats and things. I'll not get into how I got out of the JW ban on going to college here.
The WTS has pulled the ususal stunt with the length of Creative Days. It has simply stopped mentioning the number 7000. To long time Dubs when they see the WTS saying that a Creative Day was "thousands" of years long they just think, if they notice it at all, that the Society is just making a general point and that actually, they really mean 7000 years exactly. New Dubs tend to think that the length of a Creative Day is flexible and very many thousands of years long. Thus, two "thoughts" now co-exist in the organization on this issue and most JWs probably don't even realize it.
The thing to do is to get some "innocent" dub to ask at a book study exactly how long a Creative Day is. That would generate some fireworks. Indeed, since the 7000 year number is still official dogma, i.e., never having being formally revoked it is still "current truth," I wonder how much trouble a JW could get into by explicitly teaching the 7000 year long Creative Day on every possible occasion. I wonder if one could get oneself DFed for promoting divisions even though one was teaching "current truth." That is Orwellian indeed.
T.