Given the crazy traffic in South Florida,
we try to minimize the time wasted on the road and avoid retracing routes on
subsequent days. So, for our visits and
for the sake of our sanity, Dawn Marie groups our attractions, museums, etc. to
maximize our time for exploration.
On this day we’d started with a tour of
the Deering Estate. After we went out
for lunch we drove to the nearby Fairchild Gardens…
This is the Garden House near the
entrance to Fairchild Gardens.
Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden was
named after one of the most famous ‘plant explorers’ in history, David
Fairchild. (1869-1954) Fairchild was also
known as an educator and a renowned scientist.
At only 22 years of age, he created the Section of Foreign Seed and
Plant Introduction of the United States Department of Agriculture! For the next 37 years, he traveled the world
in search of plants that had potential use for the USA. Fairchild brought back hundreds of important
plants, including mangos, alfalfa, nectarines, dates, cotton, bamboos,
soybeans, pistachios, key varieties of rice and cotton as well as the flowering
cherry trees that grace Washington D.C.
This is the back of the Garden House… Fairchild
Tropical Botanic Garden is an 83-acre botanic garden, with extensive
collections of rare tropical plants including palms, cycads, flowering trees
and vines. The Fairchild Garden is located in metropolitan
Miami, just south of Coral Gables, Florida.
Amazingly, David Fairchild was
responsible for the introduction of more than 200,000 exotic plants and
varieties of established crops into the United States. The economic value of his work must be
incalculable! Dr. Fairchild retired to
Miami in 1935 and joined a group of passionate plant collectors and horticulturists
including environmentalist Marjory Stoneman Douglas, (more about her later),
and landscape architect William Lyman Phillips. This core group collaborated to bring the idea
of a one of a kind botanic garden to life, and in 1938, the Fairchild Tropical
Botanic Garden opened to the public.
This is a map…or plan of the Fairchild
Garden. If you enlarge this picture you
will get a better idea of the complexity, planning and effort that has been put
into this botanic garden. We arrived a
bit late in the afternoon and the woman who sold us our tickets gave us some
advice re: our route, so as to maximize our visit before the Garden closed for
the evening…
How do you like this photo as a mood
establishing start to our visit to Fairchild Garden! Not too bad…very peaceful and tropical…
You might have noted I'd mentioned that landscape
architect William Lyman Phillips was a member of the group that was at the
center of the development of Fairchild Garden.
He was a member of the Frederick Law Olmsted partnership and Phillips
designed the Garden. Most of Phillips’
50 year career was spent with the Olmsted brothers’ organization. For more information about David Phillips, go
to https://tclf.org/pioneer/william-lyman-phillips.
I know little to nothing about plants and
flowers. However I learned that this is
'Blue Tango', which is a cultivar (man-made hybrid) of the genus Aechmea. It has
prolific blooms and it is widely grown in South Florida.
Blue Tango belongs to the plant family,
Bromeliaceae, which encompasses over 2,700 species plus thousands of hybrids. With one exception, all are native to the
Americas. They grow from the southern
part of the United States through the Americas to Chile and Argentina. The famous and eerily beautiful…but
tree-killing…Spanish moss is a bromeliad.
So is our most well-known bromeliad…the pineapple!
This glass sculpture by Dale Chiluly was
one of several scattered throughout the Garden.
In addition to Chiluly, since 2003 Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden has
sponsored a series of exhibits by artists, including Patricia Van Dalen, Yayoi
Kusama, Fernando Botero, Cameron Gainer, Roy Lichtenstein, Franz West, Leyden
Rodriguez-Casanova, Ursula von Rydingsvard, Michele Oka Doner, Mark Dion,
Joshua Levine, as well as Claude and Francois-Xavier Lalanne. Even I recognize a couple of these names…
Dale Chihuly is an American glass
sculptor and entrepreneur. His works are considered unique to the field of
blown glass, "moving it into the realm of large-scale sculpture," In
the past 3 or 4 years Laurie and I have encountered his work in 3 or 4
different settings. To learn more about
Dale Chiluly and his many exhibits in the USA and elsewhere, go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dale_Chihuly.
A large variety of orchids are on display
throughout the Garden. There is a good
reason for it! Fairchild Gardens is the
home of the American Orchid Society! To
learn more about this organization, go to http://www.aos.org/default.aspx?id=1.
Orchids are one of the largest families
of flowering plants, with between 21,950 and 26,049 currently accepted species. The number of orchid species equals more than
twice the number of bird species, and about four times the number of mammal
species! The family encompasses about
6–11% of all seed plants. The dried seed
pods of one orchid genus, Vanilla, are of course commercially important as
flavoring in baking, perfume manufacture and aromatherapy.
Of course, a banana tree in flower had to
be a part of the exhibit. Several varieties
of bananas are produced by several kinds of large herbaceous flowering plants. In some countries, bananas used for cooking
may be called plantains. The fruit is
variable in size, color and firmness, but is usually elongated and curved, with
soft flesh rich in starch covered with a rind which may be green, yellow, red,
purple, or brown when ripe. As you can
see above, the fruits grow in clusters hanging from the top of the plant.
Bananas
are grown in at least 107 countries, and in addition to their fruit, to a
lesser extent the plants are used to make fiber, banana wine and banana beer. In 2013 bananas were fourth among the main
world food crops (after rice, wheat, and maize) in financial value.
In 2011, India led the world in banana
production, producing around 20% of the worldwide crop. Uganda was the next largest producer with
around 8% of the worldwide crop. Bananas
and plantains constitute a major staple food crop for millions of people in
developing countries. In most tropical countries, green (unripe) bananas are used
for cooking. Bananas are cooked in ways
that are similar to potatoes…fried, boiled, baked, or chipped and have similar
taste and texture when served. One banana provides about the same calories as
one potato.
These are Bottle Palms or Palmiste
Gargoulette. They are native to Round
Island, Mauritius in the Indian Ocean. Bottle
Palms have a large swollen trunk. It’s a myth that the trunk is how the palm
stores water. Bottle palms are very cold
sensitive and are killed if they are at 32°F or colder for any appreciable
length of time. While habitat
destruction may destroy the last remaining palms in the wild, the survival of
the species is assured due to its wide spread planting throughout the tropics
and subtropics as a specimen plant.
This has always been one of my favorite
trees. It a baobab! The baobab is found in the savannas of
African and India, mostly around the equator. It can grow up to 85 feet tall and they can
live for several thousand years. The
baobab is leafless for nine months of the year. The tree looks like it has been picked out of
the ground and stuffed back in upside-down.
The baobab looks like it does for an excellent reason. In the wet months water is stored in its
thick, corky, fire-resistant trunk for the 9 dry months ahead.
The Arabian legend of the baobab is that
"the devil plucked up the baobab, thrust its branches into the earth and
left its roots in the air". The
baobab's bark, leaves, fruit, and trunk are all useful. The bark of the baobab is used for cloth and
rope, the leaves for condiments and medicines, while the fruit, called
"monkey bread", is eaten. Sometimes people even live inside of the huge
trunks, and ‘bush-babies’ live in the crown.
Both Laurie and I liked the look of these
palm trees…but we didn’t learn what type they were and I wasn’t able to
identify them on the Internet.
Palm trees are flowering plants with
around 2600 species are currently known.
Most of Palms are restricted to tropical, subtropical, and warm
temperate climates. They are among the
best known and most extensively cultivated plant families. Palms have been important to humans throughout
much of history.
In addition of using Palms in
landscaping, these trees are used for their coconut products, oils, dates, palm
syrup, ivory nuts, carnauba wax, rattan cane, raffia, palm wood, hearts of palm,
vinegar, palm wine and dragon’s blood…a red resin used traditionally in
medicine, varnish, and dyes. Sago, a
starch made from the pith of the trunk of the sago palm, is still a major
staple food for lowland peoples of New Guinea and the Moluccas Islands.
How do you like this naturalistic ‘recliner’? It was created in 2007 by designer Hugo
Franca from Brazil. It’s made from Pequi
wood and woven leather.
Nearly every part of the Pequi tree is usable
for food, medical or construction purposes. The tree's pulp is a very popular food in parts of Brazil, eaten by itself
raw or prepared or used as an ingredient in cooking or to flavor beverages.
Pequi with rice and chicken is especially popular among locals. Edible pequi oil is extracted commercially. The seeds can be roasted like peanuts and
eaten as a rich snack and, in fact locally they are more popular than Brazil
nuts.
But I digress… The works of Hugo França
will be on display in the Garden until the end of May. França
uses reclaimed wood from felled, burned or dead trees to create functional
designs. He learned his unique
woodworking techniques from the indigenous people of a Bahia jungle in northeastern
Brazil. To learn more about Hugo Franca,
go to http://www.larcobaleno.com/designers/hugo-franca.html.
Part of the Fairchild Garden includes an
extensive display of cacti. Why not? Most cacti are from the tropics or
sub-tropics. They just happen to come
from generally dry parts of the tropics.
Most cacti live in habitats subject to at
least some drought. Many live in extremely dry environments, even being found
in the Atacama Desert (Chile), one of the driest places on earth. Cacti show
many adaptations to conserve water. Most species of cacti have lost true leaves,
retaining only spines, which are highly modified leaves. As well as defending
against herbivores, spines help prevent water loss by reducing air flow close
to the cactus and providing some shade.
Almost any fleshy cactus fruit is edible.
The fruit of the saguaro has long been important to the indigenous peoples of
northwestern Mexico and the southwestern United States, including the Sonoran
Desert. It can be preserved by boiling
to produce syrup and by drying. The syrup can also be fermented to produce an
alcoholic drink. One type of cactus is
prepared and eaten like potatoes in upland Bolivia. The Indian fig cactus, has long been an
important source of food. Many other
cacti are deliberately cultivated for food.
This is the Salacca Magnifica from
Borneo. This impressive clustering palm
has undivided leaves that are up to 20 feet long. Clustering palms do not develop a trunk. As you can see, it’s very spiny. I can’t imagine trying to pass through a
thicket of these plants! They produce
fruits in clusters at the base of the palm.
The fruit is commonly called ‘snake fruit’ due to their reddish-brown
scaly skin.
I have no idea what this plant is…but we both really liked the look and texture of it!
Just for your Information... Fairchild Gardens has over 45,000
members and over 1,200 volunteers on its membership rolls.
I really liked the strange looking fruit of this tree. The ‘Cannonball Tree” is native to
the rainforests of Central and South America.
‘Couroupita guianensis’ grows up to 115 feet in height. The flowers are ‘born’ in large bunches almost
as long as the tree is high. Some of
these trees flower profusely, until the entire trunk is buried in flowers. One tree can bear 1000 strongly scented flowers
per day.
The large fruit, which is woody and very
spherical, measures up to almost 10 inches wide and they give this species its common
name…"cannonball tree". They
sure do look like cannonballs! The fruit is fed to livestock such as pigs and
domestic fowl. In India the tree is
sacred to Hindus, who believe its hooded flowers look like the nāga, and it is
grown at Shiva temples.
FYI… A naga is the Sanskrit and Pāli word for a deity or class of entity or
being, taking the form of a very great snake—specifically
the king cobra.
There are many medicinal uses for the
plant. Native Amazonians use extracts of
several parts of the tree to treat hypertension, tumors, pain, and
inflammation. It has been used to treat the common cold, stomachache, skin
conditions and wounds, malaria, and toothache. Laboratory tests show that
extracts of the plant have some antimicrobial activity. The fruit pulp is rubbed on sick dogs to cure
them of mange.
Near the end of our walk through
Fairchild Garden, we came across this statue or image of Marjory Stoneman
Douglas. If you read all the way through
this rather long-winded posting, you may remember that she was part of the core
group that was behind the creation of the Garden.
Marjory Stoneman Douglas lived to be 108
years old. She was an American
journalist, writer, feminist, and environmentalist known for her staunch
defense of the Everglades. She
continuously fought against efforts to drain it and reclaim land for
development. Her most influential work
was the book The Everglades: River of Grass (1947), which redefined the popular
conception of the Everglades as a treasured river instead of a worthless swamp. The book’s impact has been compared to that
of Rachel Carson's influential book Silent Spring. (1962). Her books, stories, and journalism
career brought her influence in Miami, which she used to advance her causes.
The Fairchild Gardens are well worth the
time and the price of admission! While
I’m not into plants per se, this is an interesting and beautiful place to
explore. Fairchild Gardens are located
at 10901 Old Cutler Road in Coral Gables Florida. Phone: 305-667-1651. Website: http://www.fairchildgarden.org/.
Just click on any of the photos to
enlarge them…
Thanks for stopping by to share our
mid-winter south Florida adventures. The
next 'non-food' blog will feature the ‘wildlife’ at Fairchild Gardens…
Take Care, Big Daddy Dave
