botanical side trip

While I was vis­it­ing San Diego’s Earth Day cel­e­bra­tions on Sun­day, I took a quick detour into Bal­boa Park’s Botan­i­cal Build­ing. It dates back to the 1914–15 Panama Pacific Expo­si­tion, and lays claim to being one of the largest lath struc­tures in the world.

balboa-park-botanical-building-outside-overview

botanical-building-looking-up-into-the-mist

It was an odd feel­ing to leave the sun-drenched cel­e­bra­tion of sus­tain­able liv­ing out­side and shift gears into the shaded, misted, and heav­ily watered Botan­i­cal Build­ing. Humid and trop­i­cal, the inte­rior reminded me of the over-watered vision of par­adise that many peo­ple still think of when they think of Cal­i­for­nia. Palms, cycads, bego­nias, orchids and other trop­i­cals and sub­trop­i­cals lazed in the shade or reached for the light dozens of feet overhead.

I usu­ally go to pub­lic gar­dens and keep an eye out for things I’d like to have in my own gar­den. Gar­dens are amaz­ingly demo­c­ra­tic that way. If you look hard enough, you can often find some of the rarest plants, espe­cially now with the web avail­able to help source them.

In these days of loom­ing water rationing, how­ever, I felt a lit­tle queasy that the Botan­i­cal Build­ing was show­cas­ing all sorts of water-intensive plants San Die­gans are try­ing not to fix­ate on so much these days. Our aver­age tem­per­a­tures enable the growth of these plants, our reg­u­lar rain­fall does not.

As I was think­ing about that queasi­ness, I real­ized that many of the Bal­boa Park build­ings nearby are muse­ums that are full of unique objects or things that would be so far beyond my means to buy. The resources of these muse­ums are focused on giv­ing the pub­lic access to things and ideas they might not ordi­nar­ily encounter. I decided to try to think of the Botan­i­cal Build­ing that way, as a sort of botan­i­cal museum. Although I could prob­a­bly find many of its plants if I searched hard enough–and a few of them are actu­ally totally common–I decided to try to look at and appre­ci­ate the plants as if they were museum objects I didn’t need to own.

And as my indig­na­tion started to lift, I started to be appre­cia­tive. Wasn’t it great that peo­ple in the city have a place where they can go visit some inter­est­ing plants but not have to worry about water­ing and car­ing for them? And the Botan­i­cal Build­ing is free! If peo­ple decide to cre­ate lit­tle pock­ets of par­adise at home, they don’t need to do their whole gar­dens this way. A lit­tle shaded cor­ner could give you a lot of the same sense of cool­ness and shel­ter that the Botan­i­cal Build­ing does.

In addi­tion to the big lath house, Bal­boa Park offers a num­ber of other plant­i­ngs, includ­ing two suc­cu­lent gar­dens. So it’s not like the park spends all its resources pimp­ing an out­dated vision of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia. And there’s value in see­ing an old-school plant­ing of this sort to help appre­ci­ate how local ideas about gar­den­ing have shifted.

So…back to my visit. Lots of things were in flower, but I ended up focus­ing on plants with var­ie­gated leaves that were used through­out the build­ing. No for­est would have so many var­ie­gated plants in so small a space, but this “gar­den museum” did a nice job in show­cas­ing some of the botan­i­cal world’s inter­est­ing foliage pat­terns. Take a look…

(As usual you click on the images to enlarge them, espe­cially if the signs in the thumb­nails are too small to read…)

carex-morrowii-leaves

carex-morrowii-sign

ficus-aspera-leaves

ficus-aspera-sign

iresine-lindenii-leaves

iresine-lindenii-sign

impatiens-niamnimensis-variegata-leaves

impatiens-niamnimensis-variegata-sign

cordyline-leaves

cordyline-sign

begonia-fabulous-tom-leaves

begonia-fabulous-tom-sign

cyclamen-leaves

Cycla­men

iresine-herbstii-leaves

Ire­sine herbstii

farfugium-japonicum-aureo-maculata-leaves

farfugium-japonicum-aureo-maculata

alternanthera-party-time-leaves

alternanthera-party-time


April 21 2009 05:33 am | Categories: gardening • places | Tags: • • • •

3 Responses to “botanical side trip”

  1. Steve on 21 Apr 2009 at 1:08 pm #

    James, I feel the same way when I visit Hawaii! There may be 4 plants that grow there which I could grow in Port­land and one of them is the Dan­de­lion.;-) Besides, that is indeed what Muse­ums are for. I mean, who’d want to date a Mummy?

  2. buedamau on 21 Apr 2009 at 2:36 pm #

    it’s just aston­ish­ing, isn´t it?! i would love to a have a big gar­den where i could trie to build a smaller ver­sion, with my own hands of course!

  3. tina on 22 Apr 2009 at 5:29 am #

    What a neat house and won­der­ful var­ie­ga­tion on those plants. I am par­tial to the white/green com­bos. I kind of agree with your with your indig­na­tion at all that water, but I fig­ure every­one who waters is doing a small bit in the water cycle. Sooner or later it comes back to the ground (that is my fer­vent wish). And it is great folks can come and visit and not water it all themselves.

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