Royal Botanic Gardens
Trip Start
Oct 11, 2007
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Trip End
Dec 16, 2011
Peradeniya, Sri Lanka
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Botanical exploration in the sense of formal collecting and naming plants had been going on in Sri Lanka for at least two centuries before the gardens were established as a public facility by the British administration in 1821. This was no doubt owing in part to the important spice trade which well pre-dated the arrival of the Portuguese in 1498.
The history of plant studies in Sri Lanka is outlined in a chapter, Exploration of the flora, in a recent scholarly work Pearls, Spices and Green Gold - an illustrated history of biodiversity exploration in Sri Lanka by Rohan Pethiyagoda published by WHT, Colombo, in 2007 (ISBN:955-9114-38-3). This book was written to commemorate three hundred years since the birth of Carl Linnaeus. Though he never visited the island, the famous botanist produced his Flora Zeylanica - Flora of Ceylon, his only tropical flora - in 1747 at the age of forty. How he did this is explained by Pethiyagoda in the book.
I tender two photos taken at Peradeniya, one showing how well Queensland Kauri has grown in 140 years; the other a tranquil scene when the beautiful gardens were graced by some elegant visitors on a lovely sunny day.
On this visit I purchased a DVD so that one might travel through the gardens at leisure with either an English or a German-speaking guide.
