Page 18 - FEB2020

KEW GARDENS

I had a lovely Christmas holiday this year, and spent a few days with my sister in
London. After indulging my food cravings, Kew Gardens was next on my list of
things to do, and we chose the perfect day to visit, a little wet while in the
Conservatories, intermittently dry while wandering around the gardens, and
breathtakingly jam-packed full of AMAZING plants! I’m talking about all the types
of coffee trees, henna, pepper, vanilla, tea, proteas, betel nut palm, a virtual library
of plants. And then to top it all off, you learn about incredible advances that have
saved species from the brink of extinction, using ‘Jurassic Park’ science. Michael
Crichton must have had a sneak peek into Kew’s Conservation Biotechnology Unit.

You can see plants that are now extinct in the wild, like the redwoods from St He-
lena; and plants like Cylindrocline lorencei, a small tree daisy, considered extinct in the
wild since 1990, but thanks to Kew’s Biotechnology Unit, viable cells were cultured
into plants, and these were reintroduced into native Mauritius. The same goes for
South Africa’s lonely male cycad, Encephalartos woodii, all plants in
cultivation are clones of that last wild male specimen, so all are male. According to
Kew, Encephalartos woodii has the biggest genome of any cycad, and if you were to
unravel all the DNA from just one cell it would stretch 20m - ten times bigger than
a human genome.

Plants hold so many untold secrets, and Kew holds so many plants, so if you enjoy
discovering, then it is the most marvellous place to visit. Text & photos by S.C
Pepper; Vanilla; Tree daisy; Betel nut palm