Yesterday I finally made it to Belgium's national botanic garden, home to more than 16,000 species. It is 92 hectares and I spent half the day there without seeing everything. It is a traditional botanic garden in having lots of collections, but untraditional maybe in that there is a castle in the middle of it and some woods and fields. There is a huge conservatory half of which was under construction, as well as a smaller one that holds the Agavaceae for the garden that features plants arranged by family. Yet another Orangery now holds a cafe, but behind that is an enormous walled garden. Against the walls all kinds of vines grew, including - kudzu! There are many plants on display that are considered invasive in the US and I think they had mislabeled Celastrus scandens in the plant family section - the flower arrangement looked like oriental bittersweet to me! But this is a botanic garden for research and display and it didn't surprise me that all these plants were featured.
There is very little emphasis on invasive plants in Europe, maybe because there is such a long history of human influence on the landscape. There was a little booklet in the giftshop about giant hogweed, but otherwise not much on introduced plants.
The Belgians had colonized parts of Africa, so their displays of African plants were quite extensive, and who would guess that an institute in Leuven holds the world's most diverse collection of bananas?! Researchers at the botanic garden have also specialized in studying mosses, lichens and fungi. The garden was cleaning up after its annual garden festival over the weekend, and I have to say I sympathized with the staff!
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