9 September 2019 – Visit to the Cambridge Botanic Garden

As we did not have a Show this September Glen Link arranged a visit to the Cambridge University Botanic garden.  The tour with a knowledgeable guide certainly broadened the pleasure and value of the walk.  

Here is Glen’s account of the visit.

One of our guides on the 10th September had a special interest in trees and highlighted some of the exotic specimens the University had been encouraged to establish when it opened in 1846. The lime tree, Tilia Europaea, planted beside the original entrance in Trumpington Road, became the Garden’s logo. Related trees, in family groups, were planted on the perimeter. Juglandaceae, near the entrance, include Walnuts, Hickories and the Caucasian Wingnut. At the edge of Brookside Lawn is Isaac Newton’s apple tree, a selection called “Flower of Kent”, a scion of the original tree at Woolsthorpe Manor, Lincolnshire (Newton’s family home). It was this original tree which inspired his theory of gravity.

Who could fail to be impressed by the giant redwood, Sequoiadendron giganteum? The two and a half feet thick, spongey, reddish bark acts as insulating fire protection, although the cones need encouragement from heat to release seeds. In their native California, a dance floor was created on the stump of a felled specimen; apparently it could accommodate 8 sets of 4 couples!

Growing on West Walk, the Osage orange (Maclura pomifera) is one of the most unusual members of the mulberry family, Moraceae. The tree bears orange-size fruit high up in the branches, but the autumn winds often bring them down to litter the grass beneath. They have the appearance of large, deeply fissured, lurid neon green tennis balls or, as the horticultural staff call them, “pickled gardeners’ brains”.

The “Systematic Beds” are a Grade II listed feature of the Garden, designed in a “gardenesque style” by the first curator, Andrew Murray. They are used for teaching plant taxonomy, the science of naming and classifying organisms. Related species of plants are grown together in family beds. We tend to shy away from using Latin names for plants, but the binomial system developed by Linnaeus, where you have the genus (family name) and the species (first name), ensures there is no confusion with the identity of a plant.

Many other famous historical names are associated with the Botanic Garden. John Stevens Henslow, professor of Botany at Cambridge from 1825-1861 and his most famous student, Charles Darwin (often described as the man who walked with Henslow) studied how species vary according to their environment. Reginald Cory was another, whose magnificent legacy enabled 20 acres of land on the eastern side of the Garden to be developed in 1934; a philanthropist, a writer on horticulture, a researcher and liveryman of the Ancient Guild of Gardeners. The former residence of the Director, the construction of which he funded in 1924, is named Cory Lodge.

I can only encourage you to visit and discover the ways in which the Botanic garden fulfils its mantra of CARE: conservation, amenity, research and education. There is so much for all the family to see and learn throughout the year.

Glen Link

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