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papersky, rysmiel, zorinth and I went up to the Jardin Botanique to visit the greenhouses. Part of them were closed for some kind of renovation--had we paid admission rather than being members, we'd have been annoyed. But we saw orchids and flowering cactuses.
We also saw two things that were new to me. One was that among the many poinsettias on display, several were in flower. They flower in small clusters of tiny red and yellow flowers, easy to overlook among the huge red leaves.
The real novelty was a Wollemi pine. According to the label, it has been there for a few months. These trees aren't actually pines, and have few close living relatives. There is one stand of them in the wild, somewhere in Australia--location deliberately not published--containing less than 100 adult trees. They're being propagated for gardeners as well as botanic gardens, in part because a single population of any species is at risk.
It's an attractive young tree, not yet much taller than we were, that might not get a huge amount of attention if you saw it in passing, without the labels.
papersky, rysmiel, zorinth and I went up to the Jardin Botanique to visit the greenhouses. Part of them were closed for some kind of renovation--had we paid admission rather than being members, we'd have been annoyed. But we saw orchids and flowering cactuses. We also saw two things that were new to me. One was that among the many poinsettias on display, several were in flower. They flower in small clusters of tiny red and yellow flowers, easy to overlook among the huge red leaves.
The real novelty was a Wollemi pine. According to the label, it has been there for a few months. These trees aren't actually pines, and have few close living relatives. There is one stand of them in the wild, somewhere in Australia--location deliberately not published--containing less than 100 adult trees. They're being propagated for gardeners as well as botanic gardens, in part because a single population of any species is at risk.
It's an attractive young tree, not yet much taller than we were, that might not get a huge amount of attention if you saw it in passing, without the labels.
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It's in a certain (unknown) part of a (known) gorge, and the first bunch (later found to be a single clone) were found by rock climbers.
When a little more mature than the one you've seen (I imagine) it develops very unusual bark resembling nothing more than someone having glued chocolate puffed rice breakfast cereal all over it :-)
My mother wants one (or three), but I don't see how we could keep it alive with our harsh water restrictions, and they are still very expensive.