That’s the question I asked myself when I booked our tickets to visit the Huntington Gardens mid-November 2024. It goes without saying the Desert Garden is always my primary destination, but even I can only spend so much time there, what haven’t I seen in those 130 acres? I’ve visited the Palm Garden, the Jungle Garden, the Lily Ponds and the Subtropical Garden, the Australian Garden and the Cycad Garden*. Heck on one visit with Andrew’s family I even visited the Children’s Garden. But looking at the map and searching through the different gardens I discovered a conservatory that didn’t remember ever setting foot in!** New territory to discover, I was off…
Sometimes fronted by rather formal furniture.
Sometimes with odd fasciation.
I think they were Woodwardia unigemmata.
It was interesting to see so many of them in Sothern California, and with huge fronds even.
I was headed to the conservatory (aka the The Rose Hills Foundation Conservatory for Botanical Science) but en route my eyes were drawn to a building in the distance with a nice selection of trunking Yucca rostrata out front, the MaryLou and George Boone Gallery.
Naturally I had to walk over and check things out.
The building below, in the distance, is the conservatory.
Another angle, with a aeonium filled urn in the foreground.
The urn.
Damn, those are some happy cycads!
Anthurium vittariifolium
Pinguicula, aka butterworts, carnivorous plants.
Platycerium andinum
I couldn’t find a name on this little epiphyte, orchids of some sort I believe…
Or these next few…
More platycerium/staghorn ferns…
Another NoID epiphyte.
Oh wow…
These are always fun to see, and I love being invited to touch the plants!
Angiopteris evecta
From the signage at the Huntington: “This enormous fern has naturalized in some areas of the tropics, including Hawaii. Species of Angiopteris are the only ferns known to disperse their spores explosively.” From the Wiki: “The arching, glossy green fronds, which emerge from the tip of the rhizome, may reach up to 9 m (30 ft) long and 2.5 m (8 ft 2 in) wide”…
One last cool fern I photographed on my way out, Elaphoglossum paleaceum. Not because I was done looking around, but because I was being told to “get out now!” you see the fire alarm was going off, loudly…
There was still a lot to see, but the fire department had arrived and there was no more ignoring the alarm. I did find it quite surreal. I’d been wandering the extremely parched landscape all day, but here I was, finally in an area with humidity so high the plants were practically dripping, and now the fire department was on the scene. A reminder, I was there in November, several weeks before the tragic fires that would decimate the nearby community of Altadena.
*I didn’t mention the Chinese Garden or the Japanese Garden. I’ve never been to either because I can’t imagine spending my precious time at the Huntington visiting them when we have award winning gardens of these types up here in the PNW.
