The Auckland Arboretum
This entry was posted on 12/8/2006 1:56 AM and is filed under New Zealand.
After our trip to the Museum in
Auckland, we continued to walk through the large park and chanced upon
this lovely arboretum / botanical garden...
The entry had a pond with lily pads like you wouldn't believe!
Huge big platters of green - the largest was probably about 4 feet in
diameter (or about 1.5 meters, eh?)...
Here are some of the more unusual flowers we saw...
This flowering plant was cool not only because it was so beautiful, but
also because of how it grew. First the blossom was like a little
cone, pointing upward; then it opened like a starfish pointing up too;
but when it was in full bloom, somehow it had reversed to point
downward. How did it do that?
The blossoms were pinkish red as above, and in orange, like this...
These next we think are called paper maples, or something like
that. They grow in SB, but never look this good - and we'd
never seen the purple...
What about these crazy beautiful orange things!
up close and personal...
(Evelyn's arm's length photo in the garden...)
As we left the main building, we then came to the FERNERY. Ever
heard of a fernery before? Well - New Zealand is big on their
ferns...
The picture below doesn't do justice to this
neat place at all. It was like walking through a mystical glen
from the Lord of the Rings. Dark, with shafts of light streaming
through, and variety after amazing variety of fern fern fern along
winding paths under arbors and below giant tree ferns.
