Botanical Tour at the Gothenburg Botanical Gardens — Ep. 185

hey guys so I just arrived in yet - bawdy which is in Sweden yesterday and the weather was spectacular I mean beautiful it's a beautiful autumn day the leaves are changing here it just had the right amount of wind and then I wake up this morning and it is super Saudi it is raining cats and dogs here and it's supposed to rain all day which is a real bummer because I'm here to see the antibody Botanic Gardens or as people know them Gothenburg Botanic Gardens and the reason why I'm here is because Andrew bunting from the Chicago Botanic Gardens had said that this is the best Botanic Gardens that he's ever seen really exquisite just the layout how organized it is and I wanted to see it firsthand and bring you with me but the weather is not on our side today so at least we'll see the conservatories and then maybe tomorrow if we have a break in the weather I'll be able to take you with me to see the rest of the landscape at the Botanic Gardens so time to go [Music] there is a break in the rain so decided to actually make our way to the Botanic Gardens we get to body we're gonna see ASA Kruger who's the curator and one of the horticulturist there and luckily we are going to be spending time in the conservatories or the glass houses the actually married again and that's okay because at least we'll see what's in the glass houses [Music] [Music] [Music] all right so we have crosses separates this beautiful land area from the Botanic Garden so this is actually a really beautiful gardens as the old trees here just changing color [Applause] [Music] Oh littering this view for a little bit [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] they nice to meet you nice to meet you so how did you get involved in this Botanic Gardens well I was doing my PhD in systematic botany and Stockholm actually I'm working a little bit in the garden in Stockholm and then I applied for the position here and this is my lifelong dream to be working in the Botanical Garden so I was super excited when I saw the position and even more so when I got it it's a did you come to this Botanic Garden prior so did you have a sense of it yes what was it about this particular garden that you really liked well I like the variety I mean the conservatories are really nice and orchid collection is fantastic but also the outdoor garden is really really nice and it's very so much there's so much different parts of it and it's very friendly to the public yeah it's one of the things that I really noticed when coming here is that it's it's so inviting you walk right in and the garden just greets you so I agree with you it's really beautiful but what makes this particular Botanic Gardens really extra special well I think the layout of the garden it's positioned right on the edge of a nature serve and also the topography it's very exciting and we're building like rooms in the garden using that topography and using the the different areas creating micro climates we have a rockery that's really nice and we also have this perennial gardens and yeah it's a mixture and I think that's and open spaces it's a large area and yes so people it doesn't feel like there's a lot of people here but there is a lot of people and everyone can just go around and I think there is something something for everyone if you just like flowers and want to take a nice picture this place is for you and if you want to go into scientific stuff we have great scientific collections so then you can go be a nerd sort of in that sand and also if you just want to come and relax in the green I also think one of the things that you had said to me that really stuck out is that the garden is almost designed with like little rooms and so it's as if you're kind of like opening up a door and you're seeing something new for the first time yet you could turn the corner and there'll be something completely different on the other side I think that's really important to have and kind of the layout of a botanic garden but your specialty is here in the conservatories right yes I did my PhD on tropical plants so that's why I'm in here still working with tropical plants and I think yeah so this is my specialty the warm areas the greenhouses yeah and where were some of the places that you did some of your studies on tropical plants Madagascar primarily and the islands around Madagascar and then we went also to Vietnam to study some sister groups yeah so those plants so you're probably seeing a lot of or studying a lot of endemic you know plants were particularly when it comes to Madagascar yes yes that's right there was a rubiaceae the coffee family so a bunch of trees in that family that I lived and then aside for the fact that this is just like a really gorgeous layout with so many different types of gardens and an impressive conservatory what are some other things that are that the Gothenburg Botanic Gardens is really known for it's really known for the go5 collection if you're a scientist you want to come and look at the NGO fights and then if you're a plant and then you will go to the perennial gardens and we also have a showing each year on how to grow your perennials and how to take care of them is very very popular and also in the entrance we have this theme every year something that's to this year it was a whale because we had election year and in swedish whale and the word for election is the same so it's play awards so we had that that's a tapestry thank you so much so should we actually go and take a tour yeah sure yeah okay so this is the tropical house here we keep a lot of that useful plants and I think this is one of the most rewarding places to go with people because they will recognize stuff and the most popular thing is to look at chocolate of course yeah so that is right over here yeah and it looks like it's very much fruiting I sometimes I come here and I never see it either in bloom or with fruits on yeah this is a really good individual specimen yeah it's flowers a lot and has fruit all year round yeah really all year round wow it's really really nice and it's fun to talk about and see the flowers coming out right the stem yeah which is so unusual right what family is this in this is in mauvais see okay is that common for that family or no I mean this is really uncommon in the plant world but it's a little bit more common in the rainforests or in the tropical plants yeah and there are different different theories yeah so for this one either it's that the pollinators are big and need to have something to sit on but for these little tiny flowers they're small slice so they don't need it but it's the fruit the seed dispersals so they're monkeys and bats and so on they need somewhere to sit that it's sturdy interesting yeah because sometimes I see you occasionally will see flowers even coming out of the leaves which is also really unusual but the the stem fascinating so the theory is because of the the monkeys then yeah and also if you look at the rainforest you have a really dense canopy and if you have all your flowers up high up in the canopy there are not a lot of pollinators up there so if you want to keep your flowers where the pollinators thrive as well so if your huge tree maybe you should have your flower spear-renowned fascinating and then you also have some Piper's down here is that a pepper yes this is a little Piper we have a we have actually a lot of different Piper's going here and they are useful but also very pretty to look at yeah the variation on the the leaves is gorgeous yeah and they're trailing and you can take them anywhere so they're very very good for making a room in a in a room like this yeah so I'm gonna talk a little bit about this weird trunk that we have here I think this is fascinating in it I like to talk about this with kids so when they see this huge chunk they're like what is that it looks like an alien plant yeah and so on and then when you talk about little ants that lives in here and also no I don't think we have one but you can usually see your seedlings coming up here really showing where the ants is taking the little seeds and I think you have one here yeah and so this is an ant plant yeah and do you have native ant species that go in here now fortunately not yeah we have a lot of other ants and they seem to like them as well do they really okay right on and are there little special is it just providing like an ant home or their kind of special sugar is that it's attracting the ant for this one this is mimic oh yeah I think this is just for nesting but then we have others here as well and we have this tune bearing yeah it doesn't have any flowers right now but it has two separate kinds of neck area on the outside of the bud its food for ants yes they will keep away all the other insects that will hurt the buds and then when it open up they have other nectaries for the pollinators fascinating yeah so this little corner here is for ant plants in general and also you have some really interesting plants growing on mosses and is this also an ant phenomenal this is yeah okay this is an orchid that's what I thought now this is also for for nesting and I don't know about the nectarines for this one actually so they have hollows also oh and you have a mono Lena right there which is also another and plant with the contrasting bottoms yes I think this is I mean this is a good start coming in talking about ants and chocolate and then you get people's attention and then you can go into the more hardcore stuff after that you got some Amorphophallus here too yeah we have some one more for fellas out here and then we have a collection I we're gonna go in and look at that later on in the nursery and these are really fascinating plants I love them actually what is it about that you love love about them I love that they are it's almost like they have a temperament sort of like they decide when you know I want to have a leaf up or yeah then I have a leaf up and now I'm growing big enough to have a flower and then when they have the flower they really have a huge flower and they sort of yeah do their thing and they're so variable also in their flowering and also it's interesting with the older outdoor and the term Oh Genesis yeah but also I think the the leaves are quite nice I have one that of one of the smaller ones that have like really feathery snail leaves and this is something else that I like when you want people to go here and you want people to feel like they're in nature so you want to be touched by plants to use all of your sensories so this is really my favorite part to take people through because then they were sort of you know be greeted by by this forward I love that sentiment and it was actually one of the comments when I first saw this space is that it's manicured very well don't get me wrong but there is something about it where it's like coming into your space and I love the idea even I'm in my own home I have like my dad will sometimes come in and he's like there's leaves all over and I'm like but that's the point there touch you yeah I like that so that's something that we have here and then we have some of my favorite ferns as well oh wow look at this little head is that considered a fiddlehead or it's so prehistoric yeah really so this is the angle trees and it's huge and we have two of them like this and I think it creates really creates a room in themselves and yeah and it's also a great teaching opportunity because other little ferns will disperse their spores here so you could look at gametophyte and so they're in a different stage all together and have a completely different leaf structure yeah yeah I like these these two guys they're sort of making up the room here and then we have this huge tree in the middle that's the rubber tree so we tried to pollinate this year but I can't see any fruits anywhere yet because it was so tricky to take cuttings and get them to grow so we wanted to have some seeds and get some new because we see a rolling out to our house yeah I know that's a struggle right where you just feel like you never built a big enough glass house exactly well I went to one where they actually built out the roof for just one plant is this a Sanchez yeah right here yes I had one of these it was really beautiful and I could not fight off the spider mites indoors but yours is looking a massively more healthier than mine did yeah this trick isn't it we use a lot of biological warfare yeah I'm a huge proponent of having biological control in the home and people are a little bit creeped out because it involves insects but I'm like but you already have insects on your plans yeah and you might as well release more insects who are just gonna stick on your plants anyway they're not gonna like come in bed with you yeah some of them are really cute as well you know sometimes you say it's like a face mother can only love but I have an entomology background too so I love insects and I'm trying to get people over the hump of like you know it's okay but it's also nicer to have to have that in your home I think then putting chemicals and everything expecially because if like you're also growing food crops like you're not gonna put that on your food food like if you have basil or like thyme or whatever I want to actually point out some of these things in the understory because sometimes we don't get a chance to see some of the stuff in the understory story but you have some really cool signo liam's and and the Aglio Nima is so gorgeous you have a lot of interesting species that I haven't seen at least in u.s. Botanic Gardens and then there's that that really nice calathea yeah well these are really nice to have here because it gets so dark here and at the floor so we use dounia's and a lot of errands and and they're doing very well here so that's very nice to see it was something smells good in here you know if it's someone's uh perfume or if it's a flag guys it's a plant I let's see well I don't know which one it is really now but because a lot of them are in flower is this a Rafa de Fora or oh my goodness it's shingling beautifully this tree is really we're working a lot on it right now to get more stuff on it so in here I think what's neat when you want to come in and take a group with you it's that people always recognize these guys so these are in almost every one home right so these are Phalaenopsis but then you could just take a couple of steps over here and then you have the species from that the cultivars and I really like that you could see the species and then look at the cultivars and then you see well they probably mixed in something of this and something of that to make the coloration that you see in the stores and also so people understand that Phalaenopsis really it's a true species and like they look they're smaller and they are it started from somewhere it's starting somewhere right I have to show you this is what this is a really nice little species that we have here so this is also tiny little orchid right and you can see the lift is sort of hovering moving yeah yeah insect yes so that's part of the pollination syndrome but this is actually just labeled orchid and it was collected in the wild by my predecessor yeah so this is something for me to identify Wow and I love this you can sort when you walk around here doing inventory you find these different religions yeah everywhere so this is what I like the most actually going around in collections and finding something that's like so unusual now well you have to then cross-reference this with some of the other orchid collections around the area or like some you know herbarium specimens it will be herbarium and keys and yeah going through the literature so this is really detective work and yeah this is fantastic I think this is what I what I love doing so and coming in here and this is a really good room both for talking about pollination syndromes but also to talk about the history the human history with orchids I appreciate that and this collection will will have a little bit of everything so you can talk about the Cattleya sand you can talk about the puffy opiate looms and in the vanilla and yeah the orchid collection I think it's very interesting so it's draws the attention I mean if you have a flower looking like this you sort of get curious what's going on and if you smell it it smells really strong you can understand it has something to do with smell oh yeah that is that is quite nice you know there was some one of the fascinating things that I saw somebody who who works specifically on the scent of flowers and their pollinators and how some bee species put the perfume on them and mix different perfumes together from the different flowers in order to be able to attract the female so sometimes those bees are creating their own perfumes in order to be able to attract a female partner which is unbelievable there's so much going on beneath the canopy that we don't even know yeah there's so much we don't even know so yeah yeah and also people love to go in here and just you know look at the pretty flowers and see well maybe I want this at home or yeah that's fantastic by the way do they look like this and it's this really an orchid and yeah yeah this one reminds me of cat whiskers yeah what would actually pollinate this I'm curious oh I don't know what pollinates this but it has to have yeah it has to have a little I don't know proboscis robust kiss yeah so I would suggest that it's some kind of butterfly with a laurel ative you know and it's white so perhaps something at night now and here of course we have some traffic it looms and fragment period as well so we keep them together and then yeah we talk about them and we try to do some plantations or along the stream to sort of mimic the natural habitat as well and they seem to like it so we're gonna continue with that yeah you're to Lancias and your maiden hair ferns are looking so good right here this water really creates a good a good space for this and we have a vanilla Liana growing here as well and it's starting to take to take on again hey what's a bit sad for a while but now it's growing really nicely again and do you hand pollinate this well yes yeah so have you had some vanilla pods on it recently not recently we had someone another vanilla species but not on this one this is you had some trouble on this this is from 1920 so it's one of our oldest orchids right so we had have been a bit worried but now it looks good again yeah and I think this one a lot of people recognize from Wikipedia misty this is a really nice species and it gets a lot of attention with its coloration but it's also a very important hybrid parent for all of these fragmented ium hybrids does it primarily bloom during one particular season it's we have two flowering seasons really the so November and March April yeah that's when we have the most of them in June and we try to have guided tours and showings and do something extra for people to to come at the right time and see them yeah and usually my previous Esther he talked a lot about his travels collecting orchids and so on and so on but for orchids I'm more interested in the cultural history of them the collectors and and how it became a woman issue in in England with the stuff forgets burning down the queue collection and did you did you read the orchid thief by a chance yes yes I did you're interested in the cultural aspects and things like that even though it's a fictional account it's yeah it's based on based on so many cool issues and because of that I think it's important that we have this one this is a Dendrobium very pretty but it's named after Queen Victoria and she was the only female person you can find almost in the history of orchids that's nice this one is and was she a collector of organs as well yeah she was along with the Pope at the time and the Romanovs yeah with otherwise no females well there was during a time during the Victorian era when flowers were almost considered too showy for women yeah right yes think too vulgar colder colder yeah yeah sensitive Minds couldn't take it then we moved more into foliage plants I suppose but yeah you mentioned like some flowers are going into rest or dormancy and how do you switch up the care of your collections when they're starting to go in a more rest period yeah so we try to collect the ones who rest at the same time put them in the same house and the same netting for example and yeah we do a big brocade sort of vicious play during that winter period yeah because we also have a problem in Sweden with the light in the winter right so you have to sort of take extra care of your plants during winter yeah those of us in the Northern Hemisphere have a little bit more challenge like that yeah so this is the kids favorite room and that's what we have some low tables as well so everyone can go and look at everything I guess kids like the gory things you know eats bugs yeah and also like can be me and how big is the biggest Everest on sand yeah so you probably know that these are gonna get a lot of hand touching down here yeah yeah so we we try to keep a lot of them and we don't have these really valuable collections we try to keep keep a lot of plants divide them and have a lot of it so the collection can be touched and and be part of the visit in another way then our other plants can't really so you have some pictures here and some sundews here's the orchid that we have in here there's special for this room and it's called these sites from South Africa and extremely hard to grow so we've been looking cracking the code for four disa cultivation so that's that's nice there their main flowering season is in August and September so these guys are still hanging on do they like to have wet feet because it seems like you have them sitting in and so that maybe that's part of the cracking of the code huh so we have the draw source here as well and I like them because they are I love the leaves of course they look fantastic but also the flowers create the mist shape as well and then it's so easy to talk about polonaise pollination and prey sort of you want to keep those separate from each other then the Pentheus so this is always fun you can always like cut cut one down open it up and see what's inside and the kids are like a bug juice I try to tell them it's a smoothie for him for the plants and tell them them about the biggest one which actually capture a little monkey and rodents and stuff I think this is fun and you can do you can do a lot you can tell a lot of different stories and and also they are super pretty these are smaller tickle areas really nice and the pink color that I've never seen a pink but our wart like that and it's in bud as well so this is gonna be really nice so cool that's like one of my faves here and how are these are these do these capture something on their leaves is the trick glorious they have in the you don't see it so it's under usually in Sweden we have yellow to kill areas that grow in water and they have really specialized traps and it's the same with these but these are in the ground instead oh you won't see them and just do their underground yeah oh wow and the Reese's or yeah along the roots okay so like is it rhizome additive rhizomatous like is it yeah sure so this is probably like one individual yeah and then do you have the I'm blanking on the name it starts with an S but the carnivorous one that has a pistol that yes yeah yeah so it's just just hot as flowers okay see oh yeah just this one yeah just died but oh you could see this you could see the little style right there I think yes oh this is cool you know just like yeah if I got this yeah and those are fantastic what I like about this one is that you really have to lean in to see a lot of these because then I'd imagine that the the people who had discovered first discovered them they had been stepping on them all along but they're just right under your feet yeah and they caused such controversy with Linnaeus and yeah so they have a really nice meat history as well yeah and these these make for excellent photo plants right so you try - yeah I try to get those windows and a good light and then you have a fantastic photo and I did bring in some of butter wort to my home this time around and I am just amazed with I didn't even think I had a fungus gnat problem and then with all the fungus gnats on the leaves I was so impressed that it was you know it was better than flypaper okay well begonias we had a previous gardener who was really into begonias and it's yeah this room happened sort of and begonias well they are interesting in in many different ways of course they're really good for teaching when you look at flowers for female and male flowers and foliage and yeah just about everything you can use the begonias a model plant really I feel like there's always a begonia for everybody and because not everybody's always into begonias but is there a particular like type of begonia that you most like well I like the ones with really cool leaves I would say and for me a cool leaf would be something like like this or perhaps this something that takes up some space and has something extra I would say I like the ones that have a little bit more of a succulent look so this begonia vanozza for instance yeah sure this is really nice and it has these papery scales as well so yeah and except for begonias we have all of these so weird weird things growing in here electable yeah for example that's really cool I think and so tells some of the folks about the world well which yeah because I think it's such an interesting specimen and we don't always get a chance to see it in the in the Botanic Gardens lately they will call you a living fossil all right so all the relatives have died out and then it's the closest they have right now is kanita man def address and they make up a special branch in gymnosperms so they have little cones growing out of them female and male so on different plants and this is not in in comb right now and also these two leaves are the only leaves they will have and they was your scroll and grow and grow and grow I think they can be up to eight meters in length and then sort of just tears down into ribbons and it looks yeah and the stem grows in a weird way as well so when you go out in the mirror you would see this ugly looking green sort of like the stem goes up about 1/2 meters above ground and then you have this two leaves that form this huge rubble of green and it you could see people going in SUV's with binoculars I'm just looking looking and then all of a sudden you just break and run out sit down take a photo I can go home well they look like sea creatures you know washed up on like a sandy shore or something you know and then you have some bio items here do people touch them they are also a bit of a wheat I think we begin yeah at the beginning they were meant to be here but they've become invasive I guess spread my seed right so so now we're trying to keep them down actually yeah and then we have we have this devil metal I use I used to tell is it a nut like it is a true nettle and the ER to Casey or yeah so it's here we keep it in a box I'm glass yeah so this is I think it's called devil nettle in English as well I'm not sure yeah so this is one of the species with the most potent I guess it would probably be sting the most potent Orting like the hair yeah the head and the verdict tatius hairs I think they're called but yeah the alkaloid or whatever is in that little syringe oh it's a super potent so I think it's killed horses and dogs and you know so this is and I think that's typical for Australian things really to be really potent but they look really yummy I think the berry so it wouldn't be weird to think that someone would go and pick these and get stung really so these are really nice but we have them in the glass box so no one would touch them but also for our gardeners because even though they the leaves fall off like this and they dry out they're still very potent if you breed them in wow as you can get you burn in your lungs yeah so it's almost like a burning poison ivy equivalent I don't know if you have poison ivy here but if you burn it it could get into your lungs and actually cause inflammation in your lungs and you could die but now I'm curious because it has such potent dirt acacia hairs on this particular nettle who is the champion of taking on those fruits and I guess you know either pollinating and/or you know taking the fruits and eating them are they even edible I have no idea if you could eat him no I don't know who's gonna pick the berries and I survived my dear well I think we're just gonna stop at this here and because this is one of our really like to call unique plants this is called the Easter Island tree it comes from Easter Island outside of Chile and it's extinct in the wild but we had the luxury of tall Heyerdahl which was an explorer and he brought some seeds in the 50s that we could grow so we have the only known provenance for four Eastern island tree and we have yeah so have you been able to does this self pollinate or do you have to pollinate it with another or no it's self fertile so we can pollinate it and we have successfully got seeds that we've sown so I'm going to show you those they're in the nursery and yeah we try to we have been involved in different projects trying to get it back to Easter Island but so far unfortunately no one no tree has succeeded in their original habitat so and why do you think that is is there like a person who could care for it while it's still establishing down there or do you just kind of plant it and see you I think it's a multiple calls for it I think perhaps it needs a bit more care for a longer period of time after it's planted but also could possibly be that it hasn't been planted at the right place on the island so it the weather conditions and the climates are not perfect for this plant anymore there's something so romantic about being able to take a species that had been extinct and being able to put it back in the wild but you know perhaps you know there's just like that bitter sweetness to it that perhaps you're only going to be able to get it here and then when you think about you know plants in the wild oftentimes you know when you walk into a place like this and you have all this foliage a lot of the plants create the environment that they want to live in so maybe just having you know one or two or three or four seedlings isn't giving it enough of the environment that it would create in an in a more intact environment of course because these are trees right they want to have other trees around them and yeah creating the microclimates that that you have everywhere so and I think this guy were found on the cliff of a volcano so I think that's why this guy was left it was so hard to get to for gracing animals and and so on yeah but it's it's a very healthy looking species so hats off to you for being able to take it from seed to tree yeah yeah this is and this is something really nice and it's something really nice to talk about also about collecting things and how things can get extinct in the wild you often talk about animals and when you talk about the extinction and not plants and this is this is a really good showcase of extinction yeah we would love to see some of those seedlings yeah I'm just going to the nurseries [Music] yeah for this is behind the scenes in here here we keep these are four we have a school in the earth so this is touch sensitive and this is our for the school kids these plants so you have ginger and coconut and different things sugar cane and so on gosh it smells so sweet in here it does and on the other hand here we have a lot of scientific material so scientists at the university go and collect and do their studies on these guys so we have a lot of rubiaceae we have a rubiaceae team and some other bits and pieces coming back mostly from Ecuador and South America in here ah see looks so cool is this a coup Priya or which one is this this is cool Priya this is really nice we try to get to divide them and get more of them because I think they look really nice and we have a lot of them together you really get this and I'm thinking of like because you had done rubiaceae and I'm thinking of like we don't have a lot of house plants that are in Ruby ACA I think like I think I have some Hoffman eeeh but they're not really a good house plant like you have to really baby them but I know you can have some coffee yes I guess well maybe not the Rebecca but canna fora yeah it could be yeah there's a lot of different forms of this which is quite quite nice now these are things that you're going to be eventually putting out into yeah most of them I'm not the scientific things and also we have on Amorphophallus collection starting you know you're starting to see them here some of the flowers as well yeah so these we have in here and we just take them out when they flowers we have there are roads as well oh yeah see Emma for example and yeah and the Amorphophallus and then we start to see the Easter Island trees here so here we have a couple of them growing in this scene too doing fine we had some problems with drying up in the branches but I think we sort of solved that issue now is that an also no more 4,000 yeah we have yeah so this is yeah and we have one in bloom or whatever I think this one is nicer and it's right next to this hybrid young tan that is crackitus potts oh wow look at that that's so funny yeah I think that's part of sort of that temperament of the Amorphophallus yes indeed and also the fact that they do kind of get a little bit top-heavy and they do you ever try to stick them up a little bit or do you just kind of let them fall yeah we let them fall down oh and there's another flower right up there yeah grab yeah it's really nice and you can go into it and see both male and female flower it's really really neat here so you have the male flowers on top and then the female so you have the different flowers on this so the male flowers and the female flowers growing inside there and you could really see the difference and that it's separated on this what I like to call the older chimney yeah this we are well lucky or unlucky because it doesn't smell that much yeah I was gonna say I was like I thought like it got like a little bit of an odor but it wasn't it wasn't that guy knows but sometimes it smells really strong in here we knew yeah when you get in is that the Pylea peppery ids or what is what is this one I haven't seen it that this one yeah this is a wild peperomia we don't have the species name for it see though it's collected in wild this is so interesting and it has this like cup shape so this is another mystery I guess the collection I love that burro Mia by the way and I thought this was maybe a Pylea peppery moieties because of the way it's structured but but I'm not sure there are a lot of pepperoni yeah there are so many pepperoni is and you can never collect all of them but that is my favorite genus of all time as the peperomia yeah and I have one of my favorite ruby aces are actually in fruit over here I think really nice but this one I really like this one this is a morinda citrifolia this one here with the fruit oh yeah look at the fruits they're like little cones yeah and then you see there are flowers and top there you have a little bud some white flowers and so each square is for one flower so there are multiple fruits sticking together for this huge fruit and they're actually buoyant you say they float on water and this seed as well this buoyant in itself so it's along streams it's present it's really nice and you can make a good juice and here we have some ferns that we really try to get to grow a little bit better so we can put it in the understory and in the tropical house so this is neat and then we're trying to get some mangrove going as well but they are tiny still I have a little mangrove growing in my bio pod but it's slow it's a slow grower yeah so these yeah we are have these guys for a couple of years now but yeah we hope that we can get get a good place for them but also these guys trying to oh so huge now it's potatoes yeah so see prospectus yeah that's really nice actually but we don't have the space for it [Music] yes this is the cooler nursery so here we have a lot of bulbs and geo fights and cacti and and so on but I was gonna show you baby meetups this is one of my favorite Shinra so we really tried we made an effort two years ago so we got a lot of seats trying to get all species and subspecies of lead-ups to really because I love them and I want to get to know them better and see them yeah for real not just on pictures and in in the books and so on and tell me a little bit about your seed starting strategies for lithops Felicia I think we tried quite a number of different ways actually but really what seemed to work the best was just this sort of rocky sandy mixture and we bought extra lighting and keep them at the beginning we kept them in a heated bed now we lift them up from the heated sand bed so sand in the pots and sand around the pots to get good drainage and yeah seemed to work in the end yeah and also they grow in such limited areas so yeah I think that's part of their survival technique as well and some of the interesting things about lithops are how it actually collects and dissipates light so do you want to tell us a little bit about that sure so if you look at perhaps we can take this one is actually dividing right now that's really neat so in the wild most of this is covered in the earth and you all have these little windows up here that works both as a window letting light in but also as a UV protection because the light is Oh freaking strong with these guys but yeah and they grow in really arid in environment so they have very little water access to water so they don't want to lose water so what they do is that they have all the chlorophylls on the inside so when you slice one open like strikingly green inside and there can be totally camouflaged outside so all the chlorophyll is on the inside and they have little silica Christmas inside which will scatter the light so it will go out to all the chloroplasts on the edges and yeah they have both conical and straight cells also to get shade within themselves so they are really cool I mean the cells that they have are super cool and also because the photons excite the chlorophylls so they have to sort of D excite to chlorophylls as well right so they have those prisms on there in order to be able to dissipate the light so the light goes into the chloroplasts but it so much light so they also have to sort of ah yeah try to take the excitement down because too much light could be very damaging and hurt the cells and in the end yes and also what they do as most arid plants do is that they don't open the stomata during the day it opens at night just as with the cacti right so cam-cam metabolism can metabolism that's the key and also when you see they only have two Leafs at a time but this one are just beginning to have new leaves and they take it to an extreme the new leaves are filled with the water from the old leaves so it really draws out all the water from the old leaves before the new ones sort of get their way fascinating take care of everything now something like this where you see this growing out is this the older one or how is this growing here this looks like a little offset yeah this is - growing in the same pot I would say they're just sort of they have grown too close together so it's taking up space from each other yeah so I think these are fascinating to not be able to move and have so much water in an arid environment and just rely on camouflage yeah because they're not poisonous they're just sitting there waiting for someone to eat yummy water yeah all right well when you're in the NAMM bib desert and you better have really good camouflage for those all those ungulates coming through wanting to like nosh on you yes our gardener who's he's responsible for the licked ups he went to South Africa last year so he did a South African inspired bed out in the cacti house so we tried to do a bit of geography in here so South Africa on this side America North America South America trying to divide it up a little bit so what the gardener he went to South Africa and what was most striking to him was that they seemed to only grow on these this kind of stone so white belts like this and then you would see their little so he was like we got to do that so that was his first thing coming back it was like I'm gonna buy these stones now I hope everyone's okay with that because this is where the least of these kind of growth really wants it as authentic as possible yeah and I think this is really nice also you have the different species and now they're blooming and we could really look at the varieties most of them are yellow or white bloomers but then you see the differences in the leaves and I think this is also rather inviting here we actually have a little sign saying don't touch the plants because they're rather sensitive and we get little nail marks in them and then they die unfortunately when you see here South Africa summer rain which happens to be my name but but so they they bloom during a summer rain or is that when they're actually above the surface or well South Africa has different gradients so some of them have rain in the summer and some membrane in the winter and some parts have rain both in summer and winter so this is just from the part it gets summer right okay and then you see some of them like you said some of them get touched and they might be dying back do these ever die back completely and then re-emerge again or so for this one over here I think we have little hope of getting this one back again I don't think so so no it has to I have not seen any tips going back all the way down and at least not in greenhouse environment so what's your what are some really good care tips might you be able to impart on somebody who wants to grow with ups in their home enough light enough light that's the key even if you do everything else right and you don't have enough light then you won't have nice-looking really tops unfortunately well this is a nice little display and also very cool knowing that these are the stones that it typically has been seen in and that they're all in different stages of bloom okay come on we know colourless upon us a little after yes this is the cooler part of the greenhouses so we have a above NGO fight collection actually stretching all over here it's huge and it's it's widely known because a lot of them are unique specimens collected in the wild and we have a very neat crocus collection for example beautiful crocuses out in the landscape which is very nice so do you grow these here and then you plant them out there no these are part of a collection so they stay in here these are mostly collected from areas around Jordan and Iran and Greece and so on so we had several scientists working on these collections so that's why we have so much of the geo fights but we're also going to look at the DIA nice yes this little prima lacy cushions from Iran so this is a really nice collection we have described species from this collection and these species coming in and doing still active research on these plants and they are so cute and these are growing on like rocky outcrops or yeah so you would see like when they lose the shape you could just put in a rock and they would just immediately get on it at home and you really see unfortunately not so many are in bloom but you could really see the prima lacy flowers yeah so they're and they are so meticulously cared for like when they replant them they sit and they pick out with tweezers things that has the chrono surya and so they just yeah so this is high maintenance and it's I think the world's only collection with these many species so how many species do you have here I'm not sure at the moment but I think we have around 40 species and these are primarily from Iran okay and then who is determining the species of these and do you have do you tell primarily by the the flowers or are you looking under these under macro scopes or how are you I think both okay so we have a bus'ness the - with the end was working on this general and specific so he does all the determinations and he does the collecting together with another four to culturist here and except alone and the two of them are really working on this general making this very important scientific collection the topography of each of these is just it's so precious what is this one that's kind of like it that's an interesting one too but it's it's obviously just seemed to grow up out of it yeah that's a little weed but it's beautiful yeah it looks like it has like a pea or Snapdragon looking yeah Laur dragon in the family it is yeah so you can see the little yeah so when you turn it up here and see yeah so this is fantastic when it's all in bloom so you have all these different chase from white yellow purple and then it's just I have a really silly question but if you were to carve a stone like of a person's face and then plant these on it would it kind of like make the structure of the face of it think so I think they are to the reception themselves are too sturdy said they would sort of just clump it out into this work yeah Gretna retirement yeah yeah this is so fuzzy maybe Wow can't come by here enough yeah this is super super boys from Venezuela s billion yeah so we don't know the species but we have a genus of this yeah wow this must grow and like really harsh Sun yeah it's creating a little shadow for itself and also getting some water somewhere does it the Harrison to the the water like does it get mist or how is this waters this will probably collect some water on this and then the droplets will sort of go down here sit for the roots to take it up but this is actually a species this is shouldn't see but this is not this is a different species different okay really cool yeah thank you so much for showing this this is a nice preview into going into the travertine area yeah a lot of these guys you will find in in the too fast but well thank you so much for taking us through especially some of the nursery collections is phenomenal I think we're gonna maybe stick around and can we meet your colleague as well good yeah let's go meter it's been great to have you here it's so much fun to show show everything well you know everybody is going to love this because there are plenty of new species that I have not seen before and and I think this is gonna be such a treat for some of the viewers let me know what plants at the Gothenburg Botanical Garden we're interesting to you in the comments below and if you consider these videos valuable and then love if you could give the video a thumbs up and subscribe to the channel while you're at it it really does help the channel grow there's also other simple ways to help the channel while helping grow your knowledge of houseplants consider becoming a sustaining member of the channel tap into our 125 houseplant care spreadsheet or enroll in the houseplant master class which is a month-long audio-visual course which comes equipped with its own 350 houseplant care spreadsheet all of this and more can be found at homestead brooklyn calm

Channel: Summer Rayne Oakes

Views: 415,917

Rating: 4.9210081 out of 5

Keywords: Summer Rayne Oakes, Homestead Brooklyn, Plant One On Me, plants, houseplants, indoor plants, garden, gardening, house plants, houseplant care, Gothenburg Botanical Garden, botanical garden tour, botanic garden, botanic garden tour, Sweden, Sweden botanic Garden, subtropical garden tour, gardens in Sweden, glasshouse tour, orchids, glasshouse tour in sweden

Id: FSotOLHxB5M

Length: 60min 15sec (3615 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 13 2020