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...
In route there were a surprising number of ferns.
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!
Inside now and the first plant I'm drawn to is an aristolochia, A. arborea, which has tiny mushroom shapes inside its blooms (thought to attract pollinators).
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.
**I was wrong about that, turns out on the same visit where I spent time in the Children's Garden I also walked through the conservatory. That was
back in 2012 though, and since we enroute to meet up with others I wasn't focused on the plants, much.
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