Showing posts with label foliage plants. Show all posts
Showing posts with label foliage plants. Show all posts

Thursday, 17 May 2012

Kebun Raya

This is the second part of my visit to Kebun Raya, the botanic gardens of Bogor, about an hour's drive from Jakarta. Just click here to see Part One, my post for May's Garden Bloggers Bloom Day.

I love the incredible abundance and fertility of the tropics. In a moist forest-like atmosphere like Kebun Raya, where there is a thunderstorm virtually every day, the tiniest spore on the breeze has only to brush against the bark of tree or palm to take root. The variety of these tiny epiphytes, who live their entire lives on the surface of plants or rocks, never ceases to amaze me.





Lots of layers here including a cute, little, button-leafed creeper.


And the epiphytes are not always tiny, as you can see from these lush ferns on a palm trunk or the crows nest ferns in my earlier post.

There were some stunning specimen plants to be seen,

Traveller's Palm Ravenala madagascariensis

 as well as brilliant ideas for companion plantings,

A tangle of rhoeo, cordyline, heliconia, banana and hibiscus. I love the pink of the cordylines with the purple-undersided rhoeo.


Bird or crow's nest fern Asplenium with speckled Diffenbachia

and ideas for placement and plantings for water features and urns.

Spider lilies Hymenocallis littoralis form a semicircle around this water feature









I love the mauve creeper covering the pergola below. I initially thought it was Garlic Vine Pseudocalymma alliaceum,, but I'm not so sure now that I compare the leaves with the photo in my Tropical Garden Plants book. It's not Blue Trumpet vine Thunbergia grandifolia as it was more pink than blue.  I'm sure it's a member of the bignonia family, but that's as close as I can get.  Any suggestions?







Clerodendrum (quadriloculare?)


Anthurium


Water lettuce Pistia stratiotes

As I started this post with a tribute to the epiphytes, it seems fitting to conclude with representatives of a family famed for its beauty,which has many species favouring the arboreal lifestyle of the epiphyte: the orchids.

From Kebun Raya's orchid house...


Dendrobium hybrid



Dendrobium hybrid



Phalaenopsis or Moth Orchid


Dendrobium hybrid


Pastel toned Dendrobium hybrid


Vanda

Love the colours of this Dendrobium orchid.

So for now, it is farewell to Bogor and Kebun Raya.  I loved my visit and hope to return soon.  There is still so much to see.









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