The McMillan Greenhouse combines teaching and research functions with public display.
One
of the purposes of the greenhouse is to present unusual, exotic plants from around the
world to demonstrate the diversity of the planet's flora and to show the wild relatives
from which many of our cultivated plants have come. To this end, the complex sustains five
major growing environments.
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A
dry, sunny area for plants of the American and African deserts |
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Warm,
shady, humid rooms for orchids, bromeliads, ferns, African-violet
relatives, and other tropical plants |
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A
cool, sunny situation for winter-flowering Cymbidium and Dendrobium
orchids |
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An
enclosed outdoor area providing full sun and ample moisture for the
carnivorous pitcher plants, sundews, and Venus'-flytraps native to
the southeastern United States |
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A
two-story conservatory containing flowering trees and fascinating
foliage plants from tropical regions of both the Old and New Worlds |
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The conservatory simulates a tropical rain forest. The visitor is
immediately struck by the view of a massive tree covered with epiphytic
plants that typically grow on the trunk and branches of such rain forest
giants. This tree is actually man-made, realistically constructed from
pieces of cork oak bark mounted over a steel frame. There are more than
100 different plants on the epiphyte tree, and almost 400 species (representing 75 different plant
families) in the rain forest conservatory. Specimens range from tiny wild orchids with miniature blossoms to species
with brilliantly colored flowers and fantastically patterned leaves.
Important economic plants are also to be seen and smelled, including
Jamaican allspice, vanilla orchid vine, and a Cacao (chocolate) tree.
The dense mixture
of natural trees, vines, shrubs and epiphytes gives one a real feeling for the fragile diversity of the tropical rain forest.
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