The Eden Project

I visited the Eden Project today, my first time. My expectations had been lowered by  friends telling me they had been disappointed when they visited. I was hugely impressed, it’s a miracle created within an old china clay quarry.

It helped that I began by tagging onto a group tour, the woman leading telling fascination stories about various plants  in the Tropical Biome as we walked. along. For example, she showed us the Coco de Mer plant (extra), native to only two islands in the Pacific, and critically endangered. It produces huge seeds, which can take ten years to mature - the example in the extra is a small one. When the seed drops, it lands under the mother tree where it could be too shady to grow. So it does not grow little seed leaves above like all other plants, but pushes its seed stalk underground and away from the seed to emerge above ground metres away. The seed planted in the Biome 18 years ago , was thought to have failed, but the young plant emerged 7 metres away and much higher up (a matter of some concern as a mature tree would exceed the height of the Biome). It is one of two Coco de Mer growing in the UK, the other is at Kew. It's not known if the plant is male or female, they reach "adulthood" at 80 to 100 years. 

The blip image is part of the flower stalk of a Jade Vine, a native of the Philippines, and again endangered. The flowers (which form smooth shapes) do not last long, I'm lucky to catch them. They are a quite bizarre colour, but that serves a purpose. They are pollinated by bats in the twilight hours, and the flowers are luminescent in the available light, especially on moonlit nights.

I hadn't't realised that it is Earth day today. The Eden Project is very strong on messaging, and has a lot to say about Climate Change, environmental degradation, the importance of plants to human survival, biodiversity net gain ..... etc. It's a message that needs to be heard.