Botanic Gardens of Sydney

🚨 BRANCH OUT IS BACK 🚨 Hit follow on your favourite podcast app to discover the surprising world of plants. New episode goes live on Saturday!👇 🎧 Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3erCypE 🎧 Apple: https://apple.co/3PZPua8

Here's a preview of Alchemy of a Rainforest, our newest living exhibition at The Calyx in the Royal Botanic Garden Sydney! 🌴🌸 This immersive exhibition invites visitors to explore fascinating plant stories from the oldest ecosystem on earth: the rainforest canopy. Thank you to the incredible staff across our horticulture, living collections, education and science teams, who all helped shape and create a part of this exhibition over many months. The result? 🌸 An incredible horticultural space, featuring towering trees and rare tropical plants, with a backdrop of the largest green wall in the Southern Hemisphere! 🌴 Open daily, 10am - 4pm l Entry by donation https://bit.ly/3yHgFCP

How do you know when it's time to give your #WollemiPine more space? 🌲🤷 Pines are such slow growing plants that they can stay potted for over 20 years before outgrowing their home! So how will you know when to upgrade your glorious dinosaur tree? They'll let you know: just look for the tell-tale sign of roots growing through the holes at the bottom of the pot. 🌲 Do you have more Wollemi home gardening questions for our horticulture experts? Leave them in the comments below for the final #WollemiWednesday next week 👇

Did you know that 50 million years ago, most of Australia was covered in #rainforest plants? 🌴✨ Nowadays preserving this precious ecosystem involves intricate seed collecting, cutting, and studying, demonstrated here by Rainforest Conservation Scientist Dr Karen Sommerville. Watch Dr Sommerville uncover the hidden embryo of a familiar garden plant on Gardening Australia to bank the seed for the future! Did you recognise the striking fruit of the Palm Lily (Cordyline rubra)? 🌴 Explore the new Alchemy of a Rainforest exhibition for more hidden plant stories: https://bit.ly/3yHgFCP

💓 Wonderous #waratahs are in bloom! These spectacular red-jewelled florals are thriving at the Blue Mountains Botanic Garden Mount Tomah, the Australian Botanic Garden Mount Annan and at the Royal Botanic Garden Sydney! It's the perfect time of year to see their unique shapes and bright colours on full display. #BotanicSydney #SpringFlorals

When home gardeners become accidental citizen scientists. 🌲 In 2005, due to huge public interest, the critically endangered Wollemi Pine was made available to home gardeners around the world. They were recognised as new to science 30 years ago this month, and for the following decade were grown only in botanic gardens. Together with the Botanic Gardens of Sydney, we've since surveyed people who planted Wollemi Pines at home to discover their preferred conditions. Conservationists can now use this information to select sites for conservation plantings of Wollemi Pines. Find out more about this accidental citizen science success: https://lnkd.in/gzR8Usxx

🌲 This week marks 30 years since the discovery of the legendary dinosaur tree: the Wollemi Pine (Wollemia nobilis). 40 saplings of the critically endangered pine were planted this week at the Blue Mountains Botanic Garden Mount Tomah, accompanied by people crucial to the conservation story of this remarkable species. David Noble, the man who discovered the pine back in 1994, was there to plant his very own Wollemi. A NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service Officer, David stumbled across these once unfamiliar giants while canyoning and since that day, the "living fossil" has become a poster child for conservation. The special planting zone isn't far from the secret and secluded canyon in the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area, where just 46 adult trees and 43 juveniles remain in the wild. These plantings will help provide the most genetically diverse sources of seed for future research and conservation efforts. Congratulations to members from the NSW Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure, NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service, Volunteer Growing Friends and Foundation and Friends of the Botanic Gardens of Sydney who joined us!

Our new exhibition Alchemy of a Rainforest opens this Sunday 15 September! 🦋 A fusion of art and nature, the display features over 18,000 rainforest plants - some revealed to the public for the first time - curated by the Royal Botanic Garden Sydney's world-class horticultural team. 🐦 Explore a cocoon-like canopy constructed by ERTH and gigantic fruits, butterflies, birds, flowers, and fungi built from recycled materials by Jane Gillings. 📅 See it from Sunday 15 September 📍 Rainforest Walk & The Calyx, Royal Botanic Garden Sydney 🔗 Learn more: https://bit.ly/3yHgFCP

Last week saw 40 volunteers from Adobe switch desks for digging! Adobe created change together by getting their hands dirty alongside the Royal Botanic Garden Sydney’s horticulturalists, looking after the Garden's extraordinary Living Collection. The volunteers got up close and personal with plant life, weeding, mulching and caring for the wild-sourced, thriving plant families and ecosystems that frame the Sydney Harbour. Volunteers play a vital role at Botanic Gardens of Sydney, working to maintain these iconic landscapes and support our world-leading research. If your organisation is looking for more ways to dig into those sustainability targets, why not get involved with your Garden through our corporate volunteering program? Operating at the Royal Botanic Garden Sydney and the Australian Botanic Garden Mount Annan, the program is the perfect way to learn new skills while protecting at-risk plant species. https://lnkd.in/gGFYTRCn

🔎 Roughly 70% of all Australian species of plants, animals, fungi and other organisms have yet to be discovered, named and classified. 🌿 In the latest episode of Branch Out, we're playing an episode from The Business of Biodiversity podcast: Taxonomy – the benefits of naming nature. 👇 Listen via the links below to learn about the fascinating and important field of taxonomy and how it's potentially worth billions of dollars to the Australian economy. 🎧 Apple: https://apple.co/47l1fkJ 🎧 Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3AYopRM 🤝 #SavingOurSpecies, Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water, Taxonomy Australia, Deloitte & Grow Love Project. 📸 Spider (unknown species) on Brunonia australis flower. Jean & Fred Hort (Flickr).