Botanical gardens

[paul m]

... and help needed!
I like botanical gardens if they're good - have a wide range of plants which are properly labelled. As well as seeing beutiful beds and interesting flowers you can come out a little better educated. Sheffield Botanical Gardens was a sad sight towards the end of the last century but has been renovated and, in particular, its glass houses have been restored and a good collection of plants brought in. Some very interesting and some which confuse me because I'm not sure they were correctly labelled so I'd be pleased if anyone could advise ....

These five pavilions, being Victorian, were devoted to different parts of the British Empire! In the Australian house was this 'blueberry'

Dianella tasmanica which looks like a monocotyledon. Any further information on it? Is it edible?
Also in the Australian pavilion was this:


Which was, apparently, labelled Anigozanthos flavidus, a 'kangaroo's paw' but doesn't look like pictures on the web ... any other ideas?

Walking into South Africa we have a Protea in seed:

fascinating plants because their seeds won't germinate until exposed to fire and smoke ...
But also this rather strange plant - getting on for 2m tall - the upper leaf surface of which look rusty ....
- the only label that I could see mentioned Kalanchoe which I don't recall having any members like this .... but there, what do I know?

So, shall appreciate any comments from people who may have these as garden weeds ....
My veridct on Shffield Botanical Garden is good for plants but only 5 out of ten for labelling!

[paul m]

A lot of the SBG is just grass with a few big trees - a part of this grassland has been sown with North America plants to produce a very rough approximation of a prairie habitat:

No bison yet but there is going to be a splendid mass of colour here at the end of August.

I'm a great fancier of "Alpine" plants so always look for 'new' things in rockeries and the like. I've never seen this monocotyledon:



The flowers look a bit like Leucojum, maybe?????

Any advice? Thanks, Paul

[paul m]

Continuing my tour of botanical gardens of the world - to one in the centre of Madrid. An excellent place to have a quiet siesta in the shade after tramping the halls of the Prado; but, most importantly, this is a proper BG with nearly all the plants correctly labelled. It even has a label explaining the labels:

BGs are mainly useful for identifying plants that your not familiar with, or are familiar with but can't find in the books, usually because they're exotic:

..... but sometimes because you take them for granted: I've long taken Celtis australis for an ash ...

The beds here are not particularly ordered by Family but usually into uses and forms e.g. culinary herbs, edible fruits, timber. One quirky bed designed by someone at Reading University to illustrate a typically English bed:


The gardens were laid out by Carlos III, I think, and have lots of statuary including a fountain in a pond: much welcomed by the resident sparrows:

[paul m]

Tinkerbell, on another thread, noted the importance of Sidney Botanical Gardens in the conservation of bats:
Flying foxes - Botanic Gardens Trust - Sydney, Australia

There are three sizeable BGs in NSW - anyone familiar with them?

[paul m]

This must be a massive site in its full glory - it runs E-W down the hill and from N-S it has been quarried into the hill and runs of steps lead down into the main valley.




It looks as if this was once part of a grand gardens on a palatial scale. Unfortunately, there are now large areas without access and other parts have rather run down - for lack of money possibly?

Nevertheless, what remains is quite beautiful in some places with some very interesting plants - many of which have labels ) - which is how I know that these two plants, though seemingly very different, belong to the same family (Moraceae):
Maclura poifera

A 'false orange' although many of us would use that name for Philadelphus sp. and:

Ficus macrophylla macrophylla a huge buttressed Australian tree.

Lots of other plants - some with very impressive flowers such as this (I assume) Hibiscus, sadly unlabelled!

[Tiggrx]

The Anigozanthus is certainly one of that genus but I couldn't confirm as to species.

The Kalanchoe is K. beharensis (Velvet Leaf)

I think that the Leucojum is L. autumnale (Autumn Snowflake)

I like the Botanic Gardens at Oxford, though I haven't been for some years. They are well worth a visit.

[paul m]

Originally Posted by Tiggrx

The Anigozanthus is certainly one of that genus but I couldn't confirm as to species.

The Kalanchoe is K. beharensis (Velvet Leaf)

I think that the Leucojum is L. autumnale (Autumn Snowflake)

I like the Botanic Gardens at Oxford, though I haven't been for some years. They are well worth a visit.

Thanks. Yes, the Oxford Gardens are good and beautifully located.

[paul m]

For lovers of Botanical Gardens. like me, Lisbon is a great place. The Actual Jardim Botanico is hidden away in the centre of the city with access only trough the car park of the university! There are a couple of glasshouses which are very run down but a fsacinating, well-labelled garden which concentrates on the flora of Portugal and some of its former colonies.
A lot of these are very pretty but others are interesting commercially; I had not previously realised that the source of capers was a rather beautiful shrub:


After the botanical garden proper there is an unexpectedly large arboretum:
[img]http://www.wildabouttheworld.com/gallery/data//517/thumbs/WAWlbg
3672D-d-top-q.jpg[/img]

There are other places in Lisbon labelled as botanical gardens: didn't get to most of them ....

[paul m]

One interesting place, not quite a botanical garden proper (some of the plants weren't labelled ), is the Estufa Fria - a large greenhouse (actually part of it is outdoors) south facing in an old quarry.
Some spectacular plants like this one (unfortunately not labelled - any ideas?)



A bit dilapidated in places - I hope they manage to get it repaired.

Originally Posted by paul m

There are other places in Lisbon labelled as botanical gardens: didn't get to most of them ....

[paul m]

An interesting garden is the Jardi Botanic de Caixa de Girona - which is actually on the coast at Cap Roig near Calella de Palafrugell. It's divided into several compartments including a nun's garden and ones for the Canary Islands, Latin America (including cacti) &c but has one area for native Mediterranean plants - all beautifully labelled!

The labels are multilingual and go to show the hazards of using 'common names'. One I remember was Cercis siliquastrum which in English is called the "Judas Tree" but in Spanish it is the "Tree of Judea" and in Catalan the "Tree of Love".

Palafrugell for instance has a nice little museum dedicated to cork - the history and uses thereof ....

Museu del Suro | Museo del Corcho | Cork Museum - Visita'ns

[frostfire]

Two weekends ago I visited the botanical garden in Pisa, also known as Orto Botanico (dell'Università) di Pisa. The present garden covers nearly 3 hectares and it is supposedly the oldest university botanical garden in Europe, established in 1544 under Cosimo de’ Medici. The garden was entrusted to Luca Ghini of Imolo and relocated a couple of times in the 16th century and has been at the current location since 1591. In the Modern Era under the Medici and Lorraine dynasties, the garden grew further with the spread of botanical research.
The Medici imported plants and trees from mainly Asia and Africa, but also from America.
The garden is divided into different parts like greenhouses, (including one of the earliest iron-framed one in Italy), a school, herb gardens and arboreta and many other buildings like the Botanical Institute, which is a stunning building; the facade is totally in the Grotesque style and decorated with ceramic and shells.



Everything was labeled, but only in Italian. There were signs in other languages, but these were only the warning signs, which most the time seemed to indicate a fear of being sued! They could have placed the labels more logically though, because most of the time you couldn't get to the information labels, which were under the trees because of warnings such as these:



Definitely worth a visit if you are in the area, even in January there was lots to see and the entrance fee is very low too. I've put some other pictures in the Gallery!

[paul m]

Thanks for that - looks very interesting. I've not been to Pisa so now have a good excuse ... as if I needed one!

[paul m]

Created in 1834 by the Society of Apothecaries of the north Loire area. Is really a park with many mature specimen trees along pathways giving much needed shelter from the sun on the day I visited. It isn't strictly a botanical garden - the beds are a rather random (but well-labelled ) collection of flowering plants:

Many of them very attractive to insects:

There are lots of greenhouses but all closed and some of them very dilapidated. I gather that there are plans afoot to refurbish these.

The rest of the Garden is very well-maintained.

[paul m]

Hardly publicised, it's not easy to find the Parc Botanique in Clermont-Ferrand but well worth the effort. It's very large with greenhouse, alpine and other collections. Unfortunately I didn't have a lot of time (you could easily spend a day or two there) so confined myself to the beautifully labelled systematic beds:

and the 'ecological garden'.

Jardin botanique - Ville de Clermont-Ferrand

[paul m]

Botanical Gardens aren't just there for our amusement and education; the workers are involved in conservation and discovering new species. The people at Kew alone have found 300 new species this year.
BBC News - 'Bumper year' for botanical finds

[paul m]

Originally Posted by paul m

Botanical Gardens aren't just there for our amusement and education; the workers are involved in conservation and discovering new species. The people at Kew alone have found 300 new species this year.

Reading an article in the paper it seems that one of the discoveries was in a greenhouse at Kew - clearly had been imported accidentally!
Kew Gardens announces bumper crop of new plant species | Science | The Guardian

[paul m]

I was naturally intrigued to see that Brussels has a botanical garden quite near the city centre; but a little disappointed when I reached it. The garden is fairly small, overlooked by large modern buildings

Most of the garden is formal, Italianate although there are some nice looking shrubs and trees (not labelled ).
There is a good-looking greenhouse which is more of an orangery and used mainly for concerts, apparently. All rather run down but some work being done to restore it. A motley collection of statues in the garden including this of a fishing bird (I don't recognise the species):

.... and this poignant group:



The garden was opened 'with joyous celebrations' in 1829 on the site of 'the garden of the plague victims and a low-lying marsh'. It was given to the people of Brussels for walking and for its panorama although it has been 'subject to continual harm at the hands of the many infrastructural works .... in the district'. I'm sure lots of developers would like to knock it down and start again ....

PS: I should note that Belgium has a National Botanic Garden - Welcome to the site of the National Botanic Garden of Belgium - although I've not yet visited it.

[goosey]

I didn't know of any Botanical gardens here in The Netherlands straight off so have just had a little search and found this little gem only half an hour away on the train and short tram ride in Amsterdam. It looks fantastic actually, so I might take myself off o a little trip (if I can ever work out the new travel passes which replaced a very easy system and has caused chaos - no need to go there ).
de Hortus

[paul m]

They do tend to be poorly advertised in most places.
The Berliner Botanischer Garten at least has its own railway station but otherwise it's not publicised. It's on the outskirts of the city so is a bit like Kew in more ways than one. I wouldn't like to comment on the mass of the gardens sincethey were under a deep layer of snow:

but I wouldn't complain about the labelling!

Only two glasshouses open to the public when I visited but those were excellent.


Good to see that they have a sense of humour, giving pseudo-Latin names to the various waste bins!

Originally Posted by goosey

I didn't know of any Botanical gardens here in The Netherlands straight off so have just had a little search and found this little gem only half an hour away on the train and short tram ride in Amsterdam. It looks fantastic actually, so I might take myself off o a little trip (if I can ever work out the new travel passes which replaced a very easy system and has caused chaos - no need to go there ).
de Hortus

[jdoherty]

I've attached a pic of the Palm House in the Ormeau Botanical gardens in Belfast which is open all year round. In the same grounds is a tropical ravine but it doesn't open until April each year. They are both worth visiting if in Belfast and a lot but not all of the plants are labelled.

John

[paul m]

I re-visited the Oxford Botanic Garden last week: a fairly small but well packed garden.

Their web-site is good because it concisely explains what is the difference between a botanic garden and any other collection of plants:
oxford botanic garden | an introduction
I wasn't expecting too much at this time of year but there were a lot of plants in flower both outside (in the walled, systematic beds) as well as in the various glass houses.

Obviously not a lot of large trees in the Botanic Garden but they have an arboretum a few kilometres to the south:
harcourt arboretum | introduction

[paul m]

Wiki now has a list of gardens for the World:
List of botanical gardens - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
... along with a summary of the history and definition:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botanic_garden

The list for France is enormous - List of botanical gardens in France - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - while that for UK is not as extensive as I expected - List of botanical gardens in the United Kingdom - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[goosey]

Originally Posted by goosey

I didn't know of any Botanical gardens here in The Netherlands straight off so have just had a little search and found this little gem only half an hour away on the train and short tram ride in Amsterdam. It looks fantastic actually, so I might take myself off o a little trip (if I can ever work out the new travel passes which replaced a very easy system and has caused chaos - no need to go there ).
de Hortus

I went to Amsterdam today specifically to go to Hortus Botanicus!
My journey was not wasted –it is only 1.2 hectares and in the city centre but what a wonderful place.

It was founded by Amsterdam city council in1638 as a medicinal herb garden this was just after the city had suffered a plague epidemic, doctors and pharmacists trained here in the preparation of prescriptions.
There are over 4000 plant species from across all continents, a palm house image 4., rock gardens an evolutionary walk (shows the six stages of plant evolution starting from the very first type of land plants), tree and woodland walk, carnivorous plants, 3 climate glass house image 2+3(sub-tropical, tropical and desert with cacti which almost reached the glass roof), medic garden (this meant lots of native plants and things I see on my walks in the NP), small butterfly house and goodness knows what.
Even though there was so much still to flower yet there was so much to see and the woodland flowers filled the air with their perfume.

1. 2. 3.
4. 5.

The tropical green house was hot! I had just walked over a high bridge looking over the subtropical area opened the sliding door and walked in –I walked straight out again (to dry the camera and pack it away it had steamed up in seconds, and removed a layer of clothing)! The plants in here were spectacular and when I moved down stairs it felt as if it was raining.

I think my favourites had to be the carnivorous plants, lots were growing outside which I found amazing. Apparently Hortus has a warm microclimate being in the inner city and test several subtropical species for their winter hardiness including ferns and palms but I don’t know if the carnivorous plants come under this.

I found it a shame there were not more species in the butterfly house but it was very small, I think only about 6 but they too were easy to identify as there were photos with the relevant info.

6.

All the plants were well labeled, in Latin with either the Dutch or English common name and often gave extra information.

It cost 7.50 euros to get in, lovely café and clean toilets!

[basquesteve]

Sounds great to far for me though. The last botanical gardens I visited was Kew back in the 90's

[paul m]

Anyone near Kew in the summer will find more than the usual activities:
Visit Kew - Summer Festival
I may make a trip .....