Botanical Gardens

Orchids are the big thing in Singapore. They grow here like crabgrass, although it’s a vast improvement over crabgrass since they’re much prettier. It’s used as a national symbol, and they’re very proud of the variety and number of flowers that they find naturally and have hybridized.

Sunday morning found us on a bus to the Botanical Gardens with our new tour group.

Here’s the funny thing – lots of the locals on the trip – especially the younger ones – said they’d not been there before, or last time they were there was when they were in the 3rd grade on a school field trip.

Again, some things are universal. New Yorkers never go to the Statue of Liberty or the Empire State Building. In North Carolina, most of us go to Biltmore house any more only when accompanying out of town visitors who haven’t been there before. In Oklahoma, you go to the Cowboy Hall of Fame in the 5th Grade, and then not usually again.

We don’t appreciate the culture in our midst.

Now, for those who are starting to panic, we’re not going to go through all of the different varieties and talk about them individually. There’s a bunch. Some are amazing; some don’t look like orchids, even.

They have a “celebrity garden”, where flowers are hybridized and then named after famous people, usually after they have visited or done something for Singapore. Lady Di’s is a delicate white flower and was on display. Others rotate out on the display.

Tiger Woods, a black orchid with blue and yellow markings, seemed to be missing the day we were there.

OK, that part isn’t true. But it was too good not to say.

Some varieties live high in the mountains and need a cool, moist climate. We liked visiting that greenhouse best, since the temperature was climbing even though it was early in the day.

We’ll let the flower pics speak for themselves.