Fairchild Tropical Gardens |
Palms at Pandanus Lake
For a person from the northern latitudes, stepping onto a path of the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden is like crossing a threshold to another planet. Perhaps that is overstating the case, but every plant seems different, in form and name, and sometimes in color. The families are new, the genera unknown, and the trees are strange entities you can’t even guess. Until you wander into the less-traveled reaches of the garden and encounter a small forest of conifers, where at least the needles seem familiar, it is all new. Flowers open without hesitation beneath the hot sun and cycads produce their bizarre cones in response to an environment where an unsurpassable variety of plants, adapted to the warm, humid climate, can grow.
Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden
Seed "cone" of the cycad Encephalartos ferox
10901 Old Cutler Road Coral Gables, FL 33156
305-667-1651
www.fairchildgarden.org/
An inventory of the collection is available online
An admission fee is charged
Established 1938
83 acres. About 3,500 taxa, including cultivars
USDA Hardiness Zone 10B
Visitor Center, Gift Shop, Cafe