Sunday in brief (not worth a separate post):
We made it to Moscow without any problems. After we arrived and went through passport control, we met Igor, a dendrologist/de facto director of the arborteum of the Main Botanical Garden and who will be with us the entire time we are in Russia, and Julia, a head researcher who specializes in invasive plant research. They will be spending the next few days with us in and around Moscow, and Igor will be accompanying us to the Kola peninsula later this week. Since we got in fairly late Sunday night we just had dinner at the hotel restaurant and then turned in for the night.
Monday:
Today was a day at the Moscow Main Botanical Garden, founded in 1945. We started off by meeting Igor and Julia at the staff research building of the garden to plan out our day and the next couple of days in Moscow. From there we explored some of the arboretum portion of the botanical garden, including the birch and magnolia collections. Here is a photo of one of the oldest birches, planted in 1949:
After this we visited the Japanese Garden, which included seeing a very tall lantern dating to the 19th century and donated by Japan in a show of goodwill when the Japanese Garden was founded in the 1980s:
Interesting tidbit: Igor told us that the top portion of this lantern has been replaced 3 times due to visitors climbing the lantern and damaging the top.
Along with this we found purple loosestrife (Lythrum salicaria), a plant that some of our staff at MBG might be familiar with (looking at you, Brittany!). This plant is invasive in the US but is a beautiful native here in Russia, and seemingly quite attractive to some local bees!
After this we were joined by Irina and Viyana to tour the Central Asia collection. Irina is a researcher specializing in this area while Viyana works in the Dept. of Flora. Of note was their work in experimental crossing of various walnut fruit trees from that region, especially with Malus sieversii and Malus neidzwitziana, which both happen to be rare plants from Kyrgyzstan.
Next up we returned to the administrative building and had a brief tour of the herbarium with Ivan.
Then lunchtime! Anyone who knows me probably knows that I love trying new foods, and lunch did not disappoint. One of the best dishes at lunch (in my own opinion) was a traditional pie, like a bread stuffed with a cabbage mixture.
After lunch headed toward the greenhouses. On our way we trekked through some understudy and saw a small display of undershirt flowers (edit: Travis found these typos but told me to leave them in!). When we emerged from the forested area of the Botanical Garden we were greeted with these giant greenhouses!
These large greenhouses in the above picture are destined to be public display featuring tropical and subtropical plants. However, they are still not ready for the public despite being over 20 years old. This is apparently due to permitting setbacks and plant growing times. As special guests of the garden though we got to see inside! The planting beds inside these structures are very well delineated by geographic region, and they represent their regions well. We were given a tour of these areas by Mikhail, Head of Tropical and Subtropical Plants. Brian was super impressed and was definitely in his element here (remember, he is from Naples). Brian and Mikhail already have plans to collaborate and share plants for the development of the display in these greenhouses. Along with the large and impressive greenhouses, we also got to tour the older and smaller public and research greenhouses. These included some pretty neat collections, such as ferns, rhododendrons, and various epiphytes.
After all the walking of the day (according to my FitBit, over 7 miles), we were ready for dinner. Julia and Igor accompanied us back to our hotel where we had dinner in the hotel restaurant again. We were also joined by the Russian head of the Botanical Exchange Program, who is also named Igor. Let's call him Igor S. We had a delightful dinner where we sampled true Russian vodka and learned about some Russian toasting traditions.
Tomorrow we will be heading to a natural area outside of Moscow to see some local plants in their native habitat. We are looking forward to it!
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