Berlin Botanical Garden

Botanical Garden Entrance

Because of a trip to my former home in Unterfranken we've fallen behind on blogging, but I want to show some photos of our visit to the Berlin Botanical Garden before we tell you more about the trip.

The Berlin Botanical Garden features one of the most important collections of plants  in the world.  It's part of the Freihe Universitaet Berlin, and includes research areas, a library, a database of plants, and a large museum which costs extra. But it's also stunning, welcoming, and great fun.

We rode our new bikes to Dahlem and found out the hard way that you can't use the turn-by-turn instructions in traffic -- we kept missing what the nice Google Maps lady said and had to stop again and again to check the map. But eventually we arrived, locked our bike against the fence, paid a very reasonable entrance fee, and were on our way.

The botanical garden includes areas that are very natural-looking, others that are habitat replication, and special areas such as medicinal plants. Large conservatories, some for research and others open to the public, are shown on top of the map.

We started in the forest area, which included both a mixed deciduous forest and a birch forest.

German Forest 

It was a perfect time to go - everything was fresh and the young green was so shiny. Delicate wildflowers were scattered throughout the forest floor. The biggest surprise was the fox - yes, suddenly a big red fox came trotting along the path as if it lived here - and indeed, foxes are not rare in this city.  We fumbled with our phones and James managed to snap a picture. It was too amazing for words.

Fox in Botanical Garden

After this wonderful surprise, we walked on to see some of the plants that are typical of German wetland areas. Both nutrient-rich wetlands and nutrient poor wetland were represented (how do they do this??). 

Nutrient-Poor Wetland

Fiddleheads in Nutrient-Poor Wetland

Nutrient-Rich Wetland

I still knew many of the plants from when I was a little girl - but I didn't know the names or the details that I would know if I were looking at California native plants. So much to learn!

Next, we visited the Apothecary Garden - As I mentioned in my Farmer's Market post, Germans like to use medicinal herbs either as tea or as tinctures or salves for minor (or even major) ailments. Apothecary gardens have been important for centuries. The plants in this garden were organized according to problem area (digestive remedies, pulmonary remedies, etc.) and many of the plants were potentially toxic - but used in the right dosis they can really make a difference!

From there, we moved "inward" toward areas with full sun where rocky earth had been mounded to show off plants from Greece or other mediterranean countries. 

Mediterranean Flora

Rocky mounds also showed off alpine flora which included a fairly common Primula veris and Pulsatilla vulgaris.

Alpine Flora

At the edge of the mounds was a desert-like area with the most extraordinary tulips - was this where they originally came from? 

I could have stayed forever and enjoyed the many different plants, information about them, sounds, smells... But we had something else planned for later in the day and made our way back toward the conservatories. On the way, we enjoyed the more park-like setting that included a culinary herb garden and stunning flowering trees. 

Then we started our exploration of the conservatory, which has not only rain forest plants but also desert plants and carnivorous plants. 

Conservatory

Of course we especially enjoyed the mediterranean plants which reminded us of home, but it was a wonderful and well-labeled exhibit no matter where we looked.

Time went by much too quickly and I was sorry to go home. We only got lost a little bit on the way back and agreed that we were ready for the next adventure! More about that soon...