The pond was mostly skimmed with ice at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden on Saturday, but the koi were still active down there. They emerged at a thawed spot near the water's edge, sticking up eager fish-pouts in hopes of a snack.
But I wasn't there for winter's austere loveliness. I wanted green. Lush, verdant, loamy-smelling, humid green, which is the whole purpose of the Tropical Conservatory.
The banana had no bananas, but I didn't care. I just needed to be around some big-league photosynthesis.
Spanish moss is an epiphyte. If you have worked as a "garden guide" at BBG, as I did during the 1990s, you cannot help telling people that sort of thing. (Or informing them that the banana is not, technically, a tree.) Schoolkids in winter go nuts in this conservatory; you try to interest them in vanilla vines or coffee and cocoa trees, and they just want to do Tarzan.
I didn't find a tag to identify these delicate blushing trumpets, but they are everything that January isn't.
Bliss: It was even hotter and more humid in the water-garden conservatory. I could bask in here like a manatee.
And for a touch of distant New York springtime, there's always the Temperate House, which is sort of Mediterranean in feel. This marvelously named plant, however, is Australian. Is Creeping Boobialla the timid, less musical cousin of Waltzing Matilda?
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