When I was younger, I always wondered how the trees got leaves in the spring after they had fallen off during the fall. The most logical explanation I could come up with was that the fallen leaves magically floated back up to the branches of the tree and became green again. I would always get upset when my mother would sweep up all the dead leaves on the sidewalk outside our house because I thought she was stealing the tree's leaves.

I believed this until I was about 11 or 12 and finally realized that trees regrow their leaves every year.

Sami

I used to believe that if you stood on a toadstool, that it would turn into a dragon and eat you. Countryside walks became lightfooted journeys of pure fear thanks to the twisted lies of my dad.

izb

i told my little sisters that the big weeds behind our house would eat them if they hurt the weeds. one of the girls stayed up all night with a golf club, waiting for the weed to come get her. the next morning, after no weed shows up, she beat the weed into puree, and threatened to come after me next. ;)

booga

Every time I went into town with my mother we would walk past a store with a large (aspidistra) plant in a hideous green pot displayed in their window.

"What an abortion!" My mother would exclaim.

Many years later (and ago) when training to be a nurse, the teaching matron asked us to raise our hand if we knew the meaning of the word 'abortion'. Mine was the only hand up.

I explained it was a big green plant pot. . .

Sylvia

When I was young playing in the garden in the summer, I heard my mum say that the lettuces had gone to seed. For quite a few years I thought that lettuces ran away to sea when they got big.

Annie

I used to visit with the flowers in my mother’s yard when I was little. I believed they were little boys whose father told them they would be “pansies” if they played with girls’ toys.

Mojo!

One day my dad was picking at the bark of a tree while waiting outside somewhere and told him he should stop and he said it was good for the tree. So I peeled all the bark of a tree in out front yard thinking I was making it healthy. I got spanked for it.

Kimberly

When we were going to visit an Uncle, my Dad would bring rose bushes, peach trees, apple trees, and about anything else he could think of as a gift on each visit. I was proud of my Dad's green thumb and bragged about it at school. I told everyone that my dad even grew toilets, because Dad always told Mom to remember to bring the toilet trees.

A few years later I heard the word toiletries. I never told anyone, until now.

Robert

I was convinced that blowing bubbles on flowers helped them grow. Naturally, why not dump an entire bottle of bubbles in the flower bed?

K-dub

When I was a little girl, I used to spend a lot of time at my paternal grandmother's house. She liked to garden, and I would always play outside as she gardened. Well, one time I was playing by the mailbox and I stepped on a low-lying bush. My grandmother cried, "No! Don't step on Mr. Bush! That hurts him! It makes Mr. Bush say, 'Ouch!'" I had never heard a bush talk before, so I kept walking on it, trying to make it say "Ouch!". It never did.

MaeghanJade

I used to believe that falling leaves were dead butterflies, and I always buried them in the back yeard.

waters

When I got my glasses at age 4, I was stunned to find: trees were not solid objects of green.....that turned colors in the Fall, and fell to the ground in the shape of leaves. I also was surprised to find: adults did not have solid teeth. I couldn't see the inidividual outlines of the teeth, so I thought as a child, you got them one at a time, but as you grew older.....they must unite into a solid white mass.

Brenda in Iowa

i used to think that moss was actually hibernating moths. this was until the age of 10, when my mum finally asked why i refused to touch it (moths scare me). it still freaks me out.

Handaman

My boyfriend's parents used to amuse themselves by telling him that the rhubarb plants in their garden were triffids (as in 'Day of the Triffids').

They weren't laughing so much when, in terror, he ran them down with his tricycle...

Hen

I would always ask my mother what she was doing, even though I could totally see what she was doing. She'd answer me with "Milking a coconut" I thought for years that you got coconut milk by milking them like cows. I always wondered where the udders would have been though.

Meghan

When I was little I believed that if you wished on a dandelion and blew all the seeds off with one breath your wish would come true. I hopped all around the yard picking dandelion-fuzzy-seeds things and taking a deep breath and wish for a unicorn...consequently our yard had a alot of dandelions the next year and no unicorns were around to eat them

Anon

I found a root sticking out of the ground one day and I thought it was a dinosaur bone. I would spend hours trying to dig it up everyday, while dreaming of how famous I would be.

Erica

That eating grass was a sure fire way to gain superhuman powers.

Brendan

as a child I was incredibly traumatised by tulips, possibly after watching the day of the triffids. My dad used to deliberately take me past beds of red tulips (they were the worst ones) whenever possible. The git.

Sean

When I was little the family was driving in the country when my mother said "Look at the beautiful daffodils!". I looked out the window and saw a row of power line towers and for the next few years I believed that's what a daffodil was.

Bonnie