paul.in.kendal
Member
I went to Copenhagen recently and as a plant-nut went straight to their National Botanic Garden. What a disappointment the aquatic plants were!
It's smugly satisfying to see other nations' botanic gardens - they rarely do it anything like as well as the UK does, so I wasn't surprised that the gardens were full of weeds and the planting 'schemes' barely deserved the title. The one big victorian glasshouse was, by contrast, both an impressive structure and impressively planted. When I spotted Hydrocotyle Verticillata growing emersed in a little rock pool in a corner, it dawned on me I was on Tropica's home turf, so I started to hunt for the aquatic collection. What a disaster! Four 200-300l aquaria installed in sunlight, choked with plants and murky with algae - a few disconsolate angels moping in the depths.
Shouldn't we be lobbying Tropica to sponsor a fitting display for their national collection? And does anyone know of a really impressive public aquatic plant collection, anywhere in the world?
It's smugly satisfying to see other nations' botanic gardens - they rarely do it anything like as well as the UK does, so I wasn't surprised that the gardens were full of weeds and the planting 'schemes' barely deserved the title. The one big victorian glasshouse was, by contrast, both an impressive structure and impressively planted. When I spotted Hydrocotyle Verticillata growing emersed in a little rock pool in a corner, it dawned on me I was on Tropica's home turf, so I started to hunt for the aquatic collection. What a disaster! Four 200-300l aquaria installed in sunlight, choked with plants and murky with algae - a few disconsolate angels moping in the depths.
Shouldn't we be lobbying Tropica to sponsor a fitting display for their national collection? And does anyone know of a really impressive public aquatic plant collection, anywhere in the world?
