Day 6: Botanical Science tour and the State Forestry-Technical Academy

We met at the botanical garden this morning for a tour of the Iridarium and surrounding gardens, including the Japanese garden, rock garden, useful plant garden, herbarium, mycology lab, and DNA lab. Our first stop was the Iridarium, which is essentially another word for iris garden. There were of course several Iris, but also several other genera in the family Iridaceae. We were led by Nina, who is a worldwide iris expert! The bed in the photo below is newly created and planted, and you can still see some snow from the night before. Nina has set up an amazing website on the Iridarium and iris where you can take a virtual tour: http://flower-iris.ru/en/

Next to the Iridarium were herbaceous plantings, with a view of the main greenhouse

The herbarium is one of the largest in the world, with over 7 million specimens. We were led into an area with very old cases, and were shown some beautifully artistic specimens like we had never seen before.

On the grounds of the botanical garden is a building that houses the mycology and DNA lab. This building is newly refurbished, so the herbarium cabinets, labs, and equipment are more modern. However, the storage system for fungi was maybe not so modern, but practical, interesting and beautiful too!

Fungi stored in old matchboxes

DNA lab cryopreservation

Next up was the Japanese Garden. This garden is small but traditional, and packed with plants of wild origin. The winds picked up during our tour, and it started to snow. Beautiful...and cold!

Before leaving the botanical garden, we sat down with some of the staff to talk about ways in which we can collaborate. Particularly, we had a great conversation with the curator of the useful plant garden. This garden, also known as an apothecary garden, was the original site and purpose of the garden (like most botanical gardens at the time). She was very eager to provide assistance to us in developing our own garden. This is an exciting prospect as her garden contains over 70% wild source plants!

After tours at the botanical garden, we traveled to the St. Petersburg State Forestry-Technical Academy. This higher education institution was founded in 1803 by the decree of Alexander the First. There are several areas of specialization, including forest science, landscape design, computer systems and technologies, woodprocessing, forest engineering, chemical technology and biotechnology, economics, and so on. This school is where several staff at the botanical garden were trained. Our first stop were the surrounding gardens and forest, which support the training programs. There were several students working in the gardens while we were there.

Forest area, with Larix sp. in background

We had lunch, then went on a tour of the museum, which also supports the student's learning. On display here were animals, plants, and insects of Russia. There was also a significant area devoted to plant pests and their effects on plants. Very interesting stuff.

The butterfly exhibit

After our tours at the school, we headed back to the hotel for a quick rest before dinner. It has been a whirlwind of a trip, and things are winding down. Tomorrow (Saturday) we have some free time to explore the city, but have to try and get to bed early for a 3:30 am departure from the hotel. It has been a fabulous trip, with so many inpiring tours, personal connections, and  new collaborations. And we are very excited to host Nina, Alexandra, Svetlana, and Ana next week in St. Louis!

To our hosts we say spasibo and do svidaniya!

Day 5: Peter the Great Botanical Garden tour and the Hermitage

Today we met at the botanical garden for a tour of the greenhouses. There were originally 35 greenhouses, but 9 were destroyed in WWII. Posted prominently in one of the greenhouses is a photo of the people that cared and protected the plants during the war.

Let's just get this out of the way....Andrew, Jim and I agreed that this was pretty much the most impressive indoor collections of plants we've ever seen. 26 greenhouses, each expertly maintained and arranged taxonomically and/or geographically. I'll just let the photos speak for themselves.

Front entrance of the greenhouse complex

Our first stop was fern heaven...2 full greenhouses. The diversity was incredible and the arrangement was beautiful, with contrasting forms planted among mosses. The paths were a hard packed sand which helped keep the humidity high in these houses. I think I took a few hundred photos in these houses which I'll share when we get back!

Fern heaven

The light was just right for some great close-ups

The labels were even artistic

Plants with a orange and black ribbon signify those that survived the war.

A gigantic Agave salmiana

The manager of horticulture, showing us the photo of men who cared for the plants during the war,

A large Aspidistra collection

The aquatic greenhouse

Subtropical conifers

This house also had a huge diversity of ferns

Pityrogramma sulphurea

Phoenix canariensis

After our tour of the greenhouses, we had a late lunch and then headed to the city center with Alexandra and were led on a special tour of the Hermitage. The Hermitage is one of the largest and oldest museums in the world, founded in 1764 by Catherine the Great and opened to the public in 1852. The collection is comprised of over 3 million items, and Alexandra said if you spent 8 hours a day, every day, it would take you 10 years to see everything. Needless to say, we took a relatively quick tour, spending about 3 hours at the museum. Nina arranged for Natasia to join us, a staff person at the museum, and she took us to see some of the most famous pieces, giving some amazing commentary along the way.

Photos don't do this place justice, but I'll include a few for good measure.

The grand entrance

Mother and Child by Leonardo da Vinci

Mother and Child by Raphael

The Crouching Boy by Michaelangelo

The Return of the Prodigal Son by Rembrandt

After our time at the Hermitage, we walked around the city center and then had dinner at a fun, "kitschy"(as described by Alexandra) Russian restaurant close to our hotel. Good food and music to end a great day!

Day 4: St. Petersburg

This morning, Igor picked us up from the hotel at 4:45 am and took us to the train station. We were taking the Sapsan train, a high speed electric train that travels the route from Moscow to St. Petersburg in about 4 hours. Igor took good care of us and escorted us all the way to our seats on the train.

When we arrived in St. Petersburg, Nina met us and drove us to the botanical garden, or the Botanical Garden of the V.L. Komarov Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences. It is also known as the botanical garden of Peter the Great and is one of the oldest botanical gardens in Russia. Founded in 1714 by the order of Peter the Great as the Apothecary's Garden. Regular expeditions to various parts of the world have resulted in significant plant collections.

Today, we were going to participate in a large conference at the garden this week, the International Conference of Young Professionals. There were many concurrent sessions going on with talks on all sorts of projects in botanical science. Our track focused on botanical garden management, marketing, and education.

After the sessions in our track were over, we had a late lunch with a few of the staff from the botanical garden and then took a tour of the woody plant collections. We were led by Gennady, the garden's dendrologist, who knew the name and exact source of pretty much every plant in the collection. The diversity and comprehensiveness of the collections was incredible, and with the fall color settling in and the sun setting, it made for gorgeous, enlightening, albeit cold, tour.

Gennady talking about Magnolia obovata, from the Kurile Islands

A portion of the rock garden, still full of color

In other words, "donors". Interesting translation.

Jim standing next to a very old (200+ years) Malus mandshurica

Gorgeous catkins on a Carpinus sp.

After our tour, we headed to our hotel which is conveniently located right across the street from the botanical garden. After we checked in, we went for dinner and Nina picked us up for a quick tour of the city at night. Even in darkness, it was spectacular. We will see more of the city in the coming days.

St. Isaac's Cathedral

Day 3: Moscow Main Botanical Garden

Today we headed to Moscow Main Botanical Garden of the Russian Academy of Sciences which was a short walk from our hotel. On the agenda today was a workshop arranged by Igor and Nikita on the "Management of Living Collections and Nurseries in Botanical Gardens". Andrew, Jim, and I spoke, as well as Mikhail Romanov, Yulia Vinogradova, Zarema Smirnova, and Igor Smirnov. You can view the program here: https://sites.google.com/site/botanicalexchangeprogram/workshop_moscow_2015

The workshop was successful with more than 50 attendees. Simultaneous interpreting was provided, which made it much easier to understand and interact with our Russian colleagues. The talks were all very interesting, and it was apparent that the exchange program had made an impact in several areas, new ideas were exchanged, and there was promise of collaborating on new projects in the future.

After the workshop, we were led on a tour of the tropical and subtropical collections by Mikhail Romanov. The plant collections were over the top, and included large collections of orchids, cycads, rhododendrons, conifers, cacti and succulents, aloes, begonias, selaginellas…ok, pretty much everything. It was hard to keep walking at times because you wanted to stop and look for a while, but there was so much to see! On top of the amazing collections is a new, state of the art glasshouse which covers several acres. Construction started about 20 years ago but stopped until relatively recently. It is now set to finally open in the next year. It is an amazing place! 

The subtropical house, in the process of being planted

The begonia collection

Some plants still have handwritten labels

Just a small part of the cactus collection;
these labels are computer generated on clear plastic.

An interesting rhododendron sp. (sorry, I forgot the species)

After the tour, we went for an early dinner and then back to the hotel. We are taking a train to St. Petersburg at 5:30 am, which means we need to leave the hotel at 4:45 am, which means we need to get up at....really early!