European birds, and Asian plants exhibition

This video is about the exhibition Crown Jewels from Asia, which is at present in the botanical garden in Leiden, the Netherlands.

The exhibition celebrates the bicentenary of the botanical garden in Bogor, Indonesia, the Kebun Raya.

We went to that exhibition on 25 June.

As we walked to the botanical garden, two great spotted woodpeckers, a youngster and its mother. Sometimes they sat on the trees along the canal; sometimes on a home’s balcony.

A bit further in that canal, a great crested grebe couple building their nest. A few meters further, a coot nest with a youngster and its parents. Still about fifty meters further, another coot nest; in the part of the canal inside the botanical garden.

Near the garden entrance, information signs on the Crown Jewels from Asia exhibition. Especially about seventeenth century naturalist Rumphius, who wrote the first book on plants in Indonesia (more specifically Ambon island); work which inspired the later Bogor botanical garden.

In a hothouse, another sign about Rumphius at Nepenthes carnivorous plants. Rumphius knew that insects die in Nepenthes pitchers; he did not know yet that the plants digest them as food. Even to Charles Darwin in the nineteenth century, discovering carnivory in plants was surprising.

In the hothouse, the big Australian stick insects were still present.

In the Victoria amazonica hothouse, there was a Crown Jewels from Asia sign as well. Though these giant water lilies are from South America, not Asia. That was because in the nineteenth century there were experiments in cultivating Victoria plants in the Bogor garden before they arrived in the Leiden garden.

Outside, greenfinch and ring-necked parakeet sounds.