Carnival Capers

The annual caper to @KewGardens for the #KewOrchids show is a much anticipated dose of polychromatic goodness. This year's flamboyant Brazilian carnival theme cranked up the cheer-o-matic-ometer to fantastically festive; 'The Hips' may have even tried to make like Renato Sorriso the 'Samba Sweeper' when everybody else was busy looking at the spectacular displays. The festival is on until the 6th of March.

The cockles were further cheered by the Spring serenade of the robins in the Palm House and the signs thereof all about.

So this is how it's done. The bar has been set- some care will have to be put into crafting our own plant supports back at Plot57b.

Badgering Brocks

Watching live badgers in the wild is on our bucket list so we booked to see them from the Kew Wakehurst hide. It being a bit of a drive from Walthamstow and a weekday evening we decided to make a day of it. This meant we finally got to visit Kew Wakehurst and what a wonder it is. We were enthralled from the moment we walked through the entrance and stopped in awe to delight at the carpet of cyclamen under the grand oak trees - we'd not seen them in such profusion before.

Another ecstatic first for us was spotting this Humming-bird Hawk-moth, Macroglossum stellatarum, which we watched, for a good 20min, flitting around the buddleia until it was satiated.

We had a good walk to Westwood lake where we admired brimstone butterflies and dragonflies on the reedbed and spotted the very glimpse of a kingfisher (our first sighting for the UK) as we strolled around the far end of the lake. The mallards stopped their gobbling of the blackberries to ogle us eating our lunch.

Whiling away the last light 'til sundown - sadly this was the closest we got to seeing "a badger". The badgers were a no-show. Hey ho.

Bunga Bangkai

We had been avidly following the @kewgardens tweets about the imminent blooming of a Titan Arum (Amorphophallus titanum) of theirs as we had long wanted to see the world's largest flower and of course were intrigued by the repute of it's funky odour. It is native to western Sumatra where the Indonesians named it bunga bangkai, the corpse(carrion)flower.

We visited it just in time! After a hard day in yesterday's high temperatures the spathe was still standing and though a tad wilted towered above us. The flower was still exuding wafts reminiscent of the gutters of Petaling Street which may or may not have whelmed our synapses but we are now die-hard fans of this unconventional beauty (even more so when we discovered that when it is not flowering it is freckled). Sadly another rare spirit threatened by the palm oil industry and illegal logging.

   

We were also fortunate to witness the flowering of this curious Pachypodium and the Dasylirion wheeleri which had breached the conservatory glass.

These exotic marvels rent the stormy grey day and it was possible to step through space and time and experience wonder such like that of the 1700's when Peter Collinson et al had the world brought to London and curiosity and the curious prevailed.

On our way out the pelting rain drove us into a corner of Kew gardens we'd not visited before, the kitchen gardens and then the small physick garden behind Kew Palace.

@Kewgardens Picnic

With great anticipation we made a trip to the Kew Gardens Lily House to see the Victoria Amazonica lily. The expanse of the raise-rimmed leaves with their spikey defenses never fail to awe. The red-blushed, veined and puckered underside of the pads suggest a perturbing hybrid between strange vegetable and alien animal.

We admired the submerged terracotta potted plants and might try something similar in our puddle back home.

We ate our picnic on a bench shaded by an alder and watched the wildlife make the most of a sun-drenched day.

We were lured in by the delectable rose garden where we spent a good couple of hours elbowing our way amongst the bumblebees to plunge our noses into the very middle of the blooms to breath great lungfuls of the scented roses.

We of course made our way to see the 'Kew on a Plate' beds and were impressed by the student beds especially those that were experimenting with interplanting.

A trip to @kewgardens to see #KewOrchids.

The grandeur and proliferation of the swathes of orchids, bromeliads and pitcher plants in the curated displays outdid those we remembered from last year. We enjoyed the hunt, of wending our way around the paths of the wet tropics zones and admiring the jewel colours and complexity of the specimen plants, most of all.

We feel we would have liked to have been able to read a little information about the plants on display.

Helleborus thibetanus, discovered in the mountains of Southern China in 1869.

Today's visit was made all the more memorable by the heady scent of the aconites that greeted us on our arrival at Victoria gate, the delicate Helleborus thibetanus in the Davies Alpine House and the trilling of the robins in the sun.