“plants are up to something”">“plants are up to something”

I loved this ban­ner at the Hunt­ing­ton. Hang­ing out­side the instution’s con­ser­va­tory build­ing, it announces that the exhibits inside might be more ori­ented towards edu­ca­tion than the gar­dens that make up the rest of the grounds. The con­ser­va­tory also houses plants that might have spe­cial needs beyond the “just add water” plant­i­ngs located in the sub­trop­ics outdoors.

Pass through the front doors and you step into a green­house space con­tain­ing a minia­ture trop­i­cal rain­for­est, a cloud for­est and a bog gar­den, along with lots of edu­ca­tional signs and inter­ac­tive exhibits scat­tered through­out the space.

For me most green­houses and con­ser­va­tory gar­dens suf­fer from being exam­ples of nature-in-a-can, and to me they tend to look and smell and feel very sim­i­lar in their her­met­i­cally sealed spaces. If only the Hunt­ing­ton were located on some bar­ren snowy tun­dra plain, where enter­ing a trop­i­cal rain­for­est on a cold win­ter day might be a stun­ning revelation.

Even on this cool Decem­ber South­ern Cal­i­for­nia after­noon, the tem­per­a­ture dif­fer­ences between inside and out weren’t that pro­nounced. And the lush plant­i­ngs out­side the front door seemed to mir­ror the lushly planted indoors. Still, lack­ing the stun­ning con­trasts that might help to set the con­ser­va­tory apart from the out­doors, it was a fun place to con­nect with a lot of cool plants. When the Huntington’s giant corpse-flower (Amor­phophal­lus titanum) blooms, there is where you’ll find it. It wasn’t bloom­ing, but there were lots of other inter­est­ing things inside.

The bright red-orange trunks of the sealing-wax palm, Cyr­tosstachys renda were pretty amazing.

My visit was two days before Christ­mas, so there were this hol­i­day dis­play of poin­set­tias and amaryl­lis. At first they seemed like gra­tu­itous hol­i­day dec­o­ra­tions but then the aha moment struck me that these plants orig­i­nate in the trop­i­cal and sub­trop­i­cal belt of the Americas.

Flo­ral parts of a large anthurium species…

This car­niv­o­rous Asian pitcher plant (a species of Nepenthes) greeted vis­i­tors as they entered the cloud for­est display.

And drop­ping down into the bog gar­den, Amer­i­can pitcher plants, Sar­race­nia, and sun­dews, Drosera sp., let view­ers see other ways plants have taken up car­niv­o­rous ways. (Do you detect a theme of the con­ser­va­tory play­ing up the idea of scary, creepy plants, going from these car­niv­o­rous species to the stink­ing giant corpse flower that lines up vis­i­tors by the hun­dreds when it does its thing?)

At this point the blog­ger ram­bles on a bit: These days it almost seems that every botan­i­cal col­lec­tion feels to have its very own giant corpse flower plant that will draw the vis­i­tors when it blooms, some­thing of the way medieval churches tried to draw pil­grims by hav­ing unique relics of saints, or how many tem­ples in Asia will claim to have pre­served hairs of the Bud­dha. So it seems that the giant corpse flow­ers has become a mod­ern sec­u­lar botan­i­cal relic. It’s a lit­tle odd, since you can occa­sion­ally find the plant for sale on eBay–granted for a good chunk of change–but still noth­ing much more than you’d pay for a pair of high-end jeans.

Okay, now back to the trip…

I’m com­ing to the real­iza­tion that green­houses always scare me a bit, like I’m enter­ing a world that’s on per­pet­ual life sup­port. Upon leav­ing the con­ser­va­tory I stepped out­side into the bright Decem­ber after­noon. Not far away a reader was seated in warm­ing sun­light on a Lutyens bench, enjoy­ing the moment. I’d had a good time on my visit to the syn­thetic trop­ics, but return­ing to the real sun­shine and real weather out­doors I sud­denly felt free.

January 04 2010 06:30 am | Categories: gardening • landscape design • places | Tags: • • • • •

11 Responses to ““plants are up to something””

  1. MNGarden on 04 Jan 2010 at 7:30 am #

    It is a treat to come to your blog and visit these lovely gar­den on this very cold win­ter day.

  2. Loree/danger garden on 04 Jan 2010 at 4:16 pm #

    We missed this part of the Hunt­ing­ton on our visit as we ran out of time. I’ve never really thought about it but I think you’ve hit on some­thing with your green house observation.

  3. James Golden on 04 Jan 2010 at 7:42 pm #

    I share your feel­ings about green­houses. They creep me out. I think your anal­ogy of being inside a life sup­port sys­tem rings true.

  4. susan morrison (garden-chick) on 05 Jan 2010 at 1:04 pm #

    There was a big fuss amongst the mas­ter gar­dener crowd here two years ago when someone’s (I for­get whose) corpse flower was about to bloom. Turned out to be a big let down — not much of a smell at all.

    Must admit, I didn’t know they were ubiq­ui­tous til I read your post.

  5. steve on 06 Jan 2010 at 12:28 am #

    The Hunt­ing­ton is now an absolute “must-see” for me, James. With a daugh­ter now liv­ing there, I can see both­er­ing you for a joint visit in the future. I mean, judg­ing from your descrip­tions, it sounds almost “Smithsonian-like” with all the dif­fer­ent sty;es and areas of the place. As if one could spend days and still not catch it all.

  6. tina on 06 Jan 2010 at 4:22 am #

    I can totally under­stand your feel­ing of free­ness out­side. Trop­i­cal gar­dens do seem ‘canned’ but ever so wel­comed on a cold win­ter day. It was all the thing for my fam­ily to do when we lived in Ger­many dur­ing the win­ter and walk­ing inside a hot­house was like day and night and most wel­comed. The humid­ity itself was some­thing else too. I’ve never seen a corpse flower though, I bet they are cool.

  7. Frances on 06 Jan 2010 at 4:32 am #

    I really enjoyed your per­spec­tive on the indoor rain­for­est, James. We used to live near there, in Fuller­ton and never vis­ited the Hunt­ing­ton, although the beach was vis­ited reg­u­larly. Lack­ing the cold to warm that is expe­ri­enced in arbore­tums where the win­ter is quite cold is much more of a trip. What could they do to make it more spe­cial to dis­cern­ing vis­i­tors like you, she won­ders. :-)
    Frances

  8. skeeter on 06 Jan 2010 at 10:44 am #

    Inter­est­ing thoughts there. I have never thought of life sup­port for plants while inside the steamy build­ings but now you have my mind going. And yes, you are so cor­rect as they are liv­ing with a human life sup­port! I dont think I would care to be on life sup­port but I would like to have a per­fect cli­mate to enjoy year round!

  9. lostlandscape on 06 Jan 2010 at 8:44 pm #

    Thanks for all your com­ments! I should do some full dis­clo­sure here: I do have a small back yard green­house, and in the late 80s and 90s I main­tained it as a hot­house to grow trop­i­cal low­land orchids. Even for a small lit­tle green­house, it was a resource-intense and fairly expen­sive propo­si­tion, not to men­tion a lot of work. These days it’s unheated and mainly used for prop­a­gat­ing seedlings and for the few remain­ing orchids that refuse to die. I grew up in the trop­ics and I’ll admit to hav­ing enjoyed step­ping inside the green­house and breath­ing in the warm, humid air. But as I try to prac­tice gar­den­ing that’s less resource-intensive and closer to the land, my back­yard greenhouse’s days are look­ing like they’re num­bered. So…greenhouses do have a place in the gar­den world, for sure, but they’re def­i­nitely not a tool that will help you make peace with your own land or climate.

    And a few spe­cific responses: Susan, the corpse flower is sup­posed to have just a few hours of max­i­mum stink-time. If you miss it, it’s maybe no worse than old laundry…

    Steve, the Hunt­ing­ton is just one of three really worth­while gar­den des­ti­na­tions in that part of LA County. Look me up if you’re headed to town to visit your daughter!

    Tina, I think you got a chance with the Ger­man con­ser­va­tory to expe­ri­ence the most con­trast between inside and out. If it makes a pop­u­la­tion of kids more inter­ested in pro­tect­ing all the world’s plant life, then they’ve begun to do some good.

    Frances, too bad you didn’t make it to the Hunt­ing­ton! In my teens I lived just over the county line from Fuller­ton, and dragged my fam­ily there when I could. I’m still not sure what could make a con­ser­va­tory green­house really dis­tinc­tive, either. But maybe some amaz­ing designer will come along and do a con­ser­va­tory that really rocks.

    Skeeter, all this think­ing is start­ing to look like another post. Isn’t all gar­den­ing to some extent deal­ing with plants that might not be able to thrive with­out human inter­ven­tion where we plant them? A green­house just ampli­fies that.

  10. Greg on 09 Jan 2010 at 11:11 am #

    I like to think that folks actu­ally go to see the giant flower, more than the corpsey-fresh scent.

  11. lostlandscape on 10 Jan 2010 at 7:51 pm #

    Greg, I’m sure the giant flower thing is high on the list as well. How do you turn down the world’s largest flower, even if it smells like spoiled hamburger?

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