Amazon Waterlily Pavilion - A glass palace for the once royal waterlily

The Amazon Waterlily Pavilion at the Adelaide Botanic Garden is one of the places in Australia where one can see the Amazon Giant Waterlily or Victoria amazonica. The pavilion is a stately glass building completed in 2007 that houses the giant waterlily.

This building itself is just as eye catching as its inhabitants. Unlike any other glass building, the Amazon Waterlily Pavilion is a showcase of specialist structural engineering that combined cutting edge engineering design and detailing with inspirational aesthetics. This resulted in the use of glass in many structural forms, including glass roofs with load bearing glass beams, columns, transfer beams and walls.

View of the Amazon Waterlily Pavilion. The plants in the foreground are Dyckia sp., bromeliads originating from Brazil.

Unfortunately for me, it was not in bloom when I was there. The lily pads were impressive though, with a distinct 'bubble' like patterning on the immature pads that had already unfurled but not yet completely flattened out. The structure of the pads were used as inspiration for Joseph Paxton's design of the The Victoria Regia House, which became the precursor to his design of the Crystal Palace at Hyde Park, London to house the Great Exhibition of 1851.

A rather large Victoria amazonica lily pad that had just 'flattened out'. You can see the cell-like 'bubbles' on the leaf surface.  The reflection of the glass roof of the pavilion can be seen in the water, giving the impression that the roof is in the pond and that the leaves hang from it.

The immature pads are armed with disgustingly nasty spines and prickles as a means to ward of hungry herbivores that might otherwise be tempted to munch on the developing leaf. This thorny surface gets unfurled and finally faces downwards to the water when the leaf have fully expanded, with the exception on the edge where the pads turns upwards. The alien looking, spiteful leaves are by itself a sight to behold.

The underside of the lily pads are armed with nasty spines to keep the leaves of the Victoria waterlily from being eaten by hungry herbivores or fishes.

Chewing on this leaf and it probably would feel like having a mouthful of porcupine.

Quick facts about Victoria amazonica

The plant first described by Eduard Poeppig in 1832 as Euryale amazonica. He placed the plant in the genus of Euryale based on the supposition that it belonged to the same genus as the Asian Euryale ferox, the spiny Gorgon lily that have small purple flowers.

In 1837, John Lindley established the genus Victoria and gave the specific epithet  regia in honor of Queen Victoria. So the plant is literally being called the royal Victoria.

The Euryale amazonica that Poeppig described was transferred to the genus Victoria (since it does not belong to the Asiatic genus of Euryale). The specific epithet amazonica however, takes precedence over the name regia by the rules of nomenclature, thus the Amazon lily fell from her royal throne, so to speak. Hence the title of this post - the once royal waterlily.

Victoria amazonica has an interesting sex life, closely linked with the behavior of its sole pollinator, the scarab beetles from the genus Cylocephata. Like many primitive flowering plants, it is capable of thermogenesis i.e. heat production by the flowers.

References

• http://www.builtenvirons.com.au/Capabilities/Keyprojects/AmazonWaterlilyPavilion/tabid/87/Default.aspx
• http://www.aurecongroup.com/Projects/Property/Amazon-Waterlily-Pavilion.aspx
• http://www.viridianglass.com/Case_Studies/Vision/vision12-1/default.aspx?Case_Id=vision-12
• http://www.environment.sa.gov.au/botanicgardens/Visit/Adelaide_Botanic_Garden/Amazon_Waterlily_Pavilion
• http://www.victoria-adventure.org/victoria/victoria_history.html
• http://aob.oxfordjournals.org/content/98/6/1129.full.pdf+html

The International Rose Garden Adelaide Botanic Garden

They say a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. Well, not quite all roses smell the same, for some are scentless. But a rose, regardless of its name, is definitely pretty, and when you have a garden, filled with roses...now that is a sight to behold. The International Rose Garden in the Adelaide Botanic Garden offers a smorgasbord of roses for those who adores them. With displays of over 5,000 roses, the garden has sections devoted to Australian bred roses, single roses, heritage roses and pillar roses, it makes an almost guaranteed sensory overload trip for rose lovers. As a starter, here's a rose that is named City of Adelaide. Adelaide was the first Capital City in Australia to have a rose named after it.

City of Adelaide^TM rose. A deep salmon pink floribunda type rose with light fragrance, it has deep glossy green leaves to contrast the glowing blooms.

So be prepared and try to enjoy the display by systematically going through the rows/sections as it would be more rewarding and less tiring than getting overexcited and flit from his row to another section like a butterfly, which yours truly did, and kept on having to double take back and forth between the sections. Even worse is that I did it in the midday heat of summer!

Eye catching and mind blowing bed of red roses. There are many pergola arches in the background, covered by roses that you can walk through.

To the west of the rose garden, the Bicentennial Conservatory provides an interesting backdrop whilst the eastern side slopes up towards Hackney Road. The northern edge of this rose paradise is bounded by Plane Tree Drive whilst the Plant Biodiversity Centre and the Goodman Building sits to the south of the rose garden.

Beds of roses with the Bicentennial Conservatory in the background.

Everywhere I turned to in the rose garden, an interesting rose would catch my eye. After a while, my mind was so flooded with this visual and sensory overload (the colours and shapes and also the scents) that I just had to stand still in one spot and let my mind calm down before continuing on going from flower to flower like a bee collecting honey.

A view of the rose garden. On the foreground are a row of fragrant, pink polyantha rose called Mevrouw Nathalie Nypels. The blooms here fade to white, so you get a nice two-coloured effect. The background sees the Plant diversity Centre with the Goodman building peeking out from behind it. The taller building beyond the garden (further back and to the left of the tree) is the North Terrace House at the intersection of Hackney Road and North Terrace.

PART 2 (will post later)

High Rise Gardening

As of this date, I am officially a high rise dweller. Thirteen floors up to be precise. The view is good and the breeze a welcomed change. The only thing that really needs adjustment would be gardening in a high rise building. Space is limited and I believe the humidity fluctuates rapidly through the day. Well, its a challenge and what better way to do it than to grab the bull by its horns, and try out what works and what does not. So wish me luck with high rise balcony gardening.