Posted:
9/19/2024 |
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Date: September 19, 2024
Contact: Missouri Botanical Garden Public Relations Dept.
Email: pr@mobot.org (media use only)
For Immediate Release
ARID HOUSE OPENING AT MISSOURI BOTANICAL GARDEN
Garden’s desert plant collection on display for first time in decades
(ST. LOUIS): The Missouri Botanical Garden’s extensive cacti collection will be on display for the first time in decades in the newly opened Shoenberg Arid House.
The Shoenberg Arid House opens on Friday, Sept. 20. It will be open during the Garden’s regular hours – 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily – and included with Garden admission.
The Arid House will display the Garden’s collection of arid plants, which includes cacti and succulents. The collection dates back more than 150 years and currently includes around 1,500 taxa. The entire collection hasn’t been on display since 1994, when the Garden’s Desert House closed.
“The opening of the Shoenberg Arid House at the Missouri Botanical Garden is an important milestone in the Garden’s history,” said Garden President and Director Dr. Peter Wyse Jackson. “While the Garden has maintained a rich and important collection of desert and arid land plants from its earliest days, in recent years they have rarely been seen by our visitors. These new displays represent the remarkable diversity and adaptions of these plants, called ‘xerophytes,’ from all over the world. They present a fascinating new opportunity for Garden visitors to discover and marvel at the infinite variety and wonder of the plant kingdom.”
Since the closing of the Desert House, Garden visitors have expressed much interest in seeing the collection again, but the Garden could only display a few plants at a time without a dedicated space.
“We tried to show as many of the arid plant collection as possible, however there was a lot of interest from visitors in having a dedicated display of our arid plant collections,” said Andrew Wyatt, Senior Vice President of Horticulture and Living Collections.
The Arid House is one of the Garden's most botanically diverse displays concentrated in a small area. Visitors can explore the architecturally interesting space and see many unique plant species, including many threatened species.
One of the world’s rarest trees, Karomia gigas, will be on display for the first time anywhere in the world. The Garden has been working to save this tree – a member of the mint family that can grow up to 80 feet tall – from extinction, as fewer than 50 are left in the wild.
The Shoenberg Arid House is in the space formerly known as the Shoenberg Temperate House, just north of the Climatron®. The glass conservatory is connected to the Climatron ® through the Brookings Exploration Center.
For photos of the Arid House, please email cmartin@mobot.org.
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The Missouri Botanical Garden’s mission is “to discover and share knowledge about plants and their environment in order to preserve and enrich life.” Today, 165 years after opening, the Missouri Botanical Garden is a National Historic Landmark and a center for science, conservation, education and horticultural display.