This is my second time round in Glass, this time I will be working in the tropical section, Dave, Petra and Greg who looks after this area gave me a tour of the sections that they look after. Dave section also covers some of Temperate. He doesn't really have a place to grow plants for their sections like the others do, they usually buy things in, so has less control than the others on what they use and how their plants are etc. Although Prop props their material, Glass (e.g. Chris and Sandra from Temperate) looks after their plants once they have germinated/ rooted, so can manipulate the plants more to how they want them. I am trying to get a sense of the type of plant that they use in tropical, for example palms from ARECACEAE family and strange climber type things like
Monstera and
Philodendron in ARACEAE. Roots are an interesting topic here, they have epiphytes in terms of Bromeliads, Orchids and Cactii, which takes in nutrients through their roots in the air, things like
Monstera have finer roots that come out of their stems to help them climb and cling to things like rocks (not sure if that's what they naturally do in the wild). Then there are a lot of
Ficus in there (MORACEAE) family, things like
Ficus aurea aka the Strangler Fig and
Philodendron (not sure if all) produces roots from their stems too but these drop down probing to take roots in the ground like runners to create itself another plant.
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| Photo 1: A moss pole is made for this Anthurium veitchii also ARACEAE, to help provide moisture and for it to cling onto the wall better |
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| Photo 2: Dave points out how this Monstera acacoyaguensis when its stems sees more light instead of lengthening, it concentrates on thickening |
There is automatic shading and misting in the tropical side. The shading doubles up as insulation also, so it comes down every night, all of that section is covered apart from the very top.
Like Temperate it's work in the display house 0730am - 10am (up until it opens for the public) then it's work in the service house. They have given up their meet up every morning meetings and people just go straight into the work that they need to do.
A cherry picker has been hired out this week to do some work at height. There was an
Alstonia scholaris that had grown too high and was pushing itself into the top of the glass roof. Greg has reduced the size annually, but it springs back just as enthusiastically, so he has decided to take down almost half of it off. The provenance of this tree ranges from Australia, India to Africa. It is in the APOCYNACEAE family, and has a white sap like
Euphorbia. It hasn't flowered here yet but they are white and meant to be fragrant. Its leaves are in whorls, irregular - leaflets of 3 - 10. Then they grow in whorls around the stem around 4 - 5. As the tree grows fast and is easy to cultivate apparently it is used for manufacturing pencils, Sri Lanka use it for coffins and in Borneo they use the wood close to the root because it's light and white for net floats, utensils, corks etc. As I was not well, Greg worked at height and I cut down big pieces of cut offs into smaller pieces so they would fit in the compost trailer better. He cut most of it off but had to leave the thicker middle stems for Arb to come and finish as he didn't have the tools to do so.
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| Photo 4: The Astonia with still the middle two thick stems to be shorted by Arb. |
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| Photo 5: Debris below |
