Amsterdam, The Netherlands –
We had passed by several times, fascinated by the huge greenhouse on the edge of the canal.
It was obviously some sort of botanical garden.
And it made sense; after all we were staying just down the street, directly across from the zoo.
All we had to do was turn left as we exited our hotel, and within a couple of blocks, we would find ourselves walking past the entrance.
So, after a couple of days, Dore wanted to see what they might have hidden behind those walls.
After all, she loves flowers and plants.
As for myself, I’m fascinated by unusual looking plants.
Ones you don’t normally see in people’s flower gardens.
Neither of us was disappointed.
It was like stepping back into a living part of city history.
From back when Amsterdam was a center of international trade.
Back when the city sent ships to all corners of the known world, returning with all sorts of discoveries and goods to sell and trade.
Back when Europe was struck with the plague.
It was almost 400 years ago when the city established the Hortus Botanicus as a center for maintaining and cultivating plants and herbs from all around the world.
The idea was to stock it with plants that had medicinal benefits so that doctors from all around the city could study and make use of what they had.
Whether they were dealing with the plague, or some other diseases.
This would require gathering plants from around the world.
After all, with their traders bringing back strange and exotic diseases from their travels, it only made sense for them to bring back the plants that might be useful in treating those same diseases.
And, as a result, they wound up with quite the collection.
And they cultivated and distributed seeds from their collection as well.
After all, it didn’t take long for the East India Company to see the value of cultivating certain plants for trade purposes, not just medicinal.
That’s how coffee got to Central and South America, from a single plant in this garden.
And how oil palms got to the Dutch East Indies and Indonesia, all from seeds cultivated in this garden.
But we didn’t know any of this when we walked through the gate.
We didn’t know what we would find once inside.
At first, it looked like a nice decorative garden, with raised gardens and boxwood hedges groomed in a geometrical pattern, along with the occasional larger bushy plant sticking up.
And there were a few scattered sculptures among the plants, most looking like quasi-organic creatures.
Mutant ticks, and seeds come to life, making their way to the water’s edge.
It was as we made our way past the initial decorative part that things began getting interesting.
It was when we discovered the Wollemi Pine that we realized just how unique this place is.
See, the Wollemi Pine is basically the same tree it was 200 million years ago.
Until recently, it was thought to be extinct, found only in fossils.
And then, about 60 of them were found in a valley in Australia.
So naturally, they’ve got one here.
Caged, so it can’t escape.
Well, it’s more likely so that we can’t harm it — I don’t think they expect it to sprout legs and walk off.
Then there were the greenhouses.
In one of the older greenhouses, we found a wide variety of palms and ferns, with a very large palm seed split in two, allowing you to see its internal structure.
Then there were the floating gardens, where they seem to be cultivating various plants that float on top of bodies of water.
And then, finally, we wandered into the largest greenhouse that had attracted us in the first place.
We found it wasn’t one greenhouse, it was three.
Hot, hotter, and hottest.
Well, not quite.
It was more like African savannah, desert, and tropical rainforest.
So it was more like dry, dryer, and so humid it’ll fog over your glasses.
All while still being hot.
Of course, we were visiting in early spring, so the heat could just have been a perception thing, in contrast to the cool of outside.
And we could walk through these greenhouses on ground level, as well as on raised catwalks, allowing us to view the trees and plants from treetop level.
Of course, the catwalks were not even close to being handicap-accessible, having to climb various sets of stairs to get to them.
Including a spiral staircase.
And it was in one of these three greenhouses where they had one or two shipping containers on display, showing how the old East India Company would ship these exotic plants home from whatever far-flung place it had been found.
Again, it was like they treated the plant as if it were a wild animal, keeping it caged to prevent it from escaping.
As if.
I mean, they were shipping via ocean-going vessel, where would it escape to?
Of course, it could just rampage through the crew, making the boat a ghost ship, while it laid in wait for some other random boat to discover it and provide more victims to…
Maybe I’ve seen one too many bad sci-fi movies…
After all, these are plants, not aliens from outer space.
Although, looking at some of these…
Nope, just my imagination getting away from itself.
Again.
Still, it was an interesting way to spend a couple of hours on a sunny day in Amsterdam.
A good alternative to spending the time indoors at yet another museum.
Why look at paintings of long dead plants and people when we can see the living plants up close and personal?
It’s a living, breathing museum with fresh air and sunshine…
Just watch out for the caged man-eaters.
After all, we don’t want them to escape and rampage through the city.
Attack of the Giant Hogweed indeed…
For more photos of Hortus Botanicus, click here.
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