A botanical garden with many conifers

In this video are some cycads at the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden in Miami, Florida, USA, on January 14, 2007.

Pinetum Blijdenstein in Hilversum in the Netherlands is a somewhat unusual botanical garden. In most such gardens, the emphasis is on flowering plants, after the age of dinosaurs the majority of the world’s plant species.

However, in this pinetum, as the name says, the emphasis is on gymnospermic plants, especially conifers. There are over 500 coniferous species in the world. Outside in the garden of the pinetum, those conifers are surrounded by gingkos, rhododendrons and poppies. In the greenhouses, there are, under specific climatological conditions and accompanied by cycads (about 70 species in this pinetum), subtropical and even tropical conifer species. There is also an extensive collection of Tasmanian plants.

The pinetum has 2500 species, including 49 of the 63 coniferous species worldwide threatened by extinction.

In both outdoor and (greenhouse) indoor pools, turtles are swimming. They are two subspecies of Trachemys scripta: the red-eared slider, and the Cumberland turtle. In the outdoor pool, also pondskaters. In the subtropical greenhouse pool, goldfish. Plants in that greenhouse include the Bhutan cypress, and Araucaria nemorosa.

In the hottest greenhouse are the Lebombo cycad from South Africa, and young plants of Kaori blanc from New Caledonia.

Cycads in Belgium: here.

Turtles in New York: here.

Huge swathes of land in Chile, Brazil and Argentina are covered with millions of Araucaria, or monkey puzzle trees, thanks to people planting or cultivating them more than a thousand years ago, a new study shows. Recent logging means the landscape is now one of the world’s most at-risk environments: here.

Related articles

• A Cast of Conifers (tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com)
• practicalities: transformation of a conifer plantation to a forest (ecoartfilm.com)
• Botanical garden ducks and blackbird (dearkitty1.wordpress.com)
• Fairchild Botanical Garden Playing Host To Art Basel Exhibits (miami.cbslocal.com)
• A visual collection (triblive.com)
• In This State: For botanical artist Bobbi Angell, the beauty is in the details (vtdigger.org)
• When You’re Almost Extinct, Your Price Goes Up (npr.org)