McMillan Greenhouse is a museum for extraordinary chlorophyll citizens of the world. Larry Mellichamp, professor of botany and director of the UNC-Charlotte Botanical Gardens manages the menagerie of exotics. Many of the specimens are his personal finds from trips to as faraway as Tasmania and South Africa or as close to home as the Green Swamp Preserve in North Carolina.
Lady Gaga Plants
The main three rooms of the greenhouse are packed with plants from floor to ceiling. Many advertise their oddities to the observer in Lady Gagalike outfits or colors like the passionflower, Passiflora incarnata, bat plant, Tacca, and gloriosa lily, Gloriosa superba.
Carnivorous Characters
Some attract attention with uncanny capers like ingesting and digesting prey. McMillan greenhouse has one of the best pitcher plant, Cephalotus, collections in the U.S. Sundews, Drosera, Venus flytraps, Dionaea muscipula, and butterworts, Pinguicula, are among the other carnivorous consumers in McMillan.
Plant Protection Services
Some strange plants have weaponry to keep visitors at a distance and threats to a minimum. The talonlike thorns of the flying dragon, Poncirus trifoliata, and blood-red prickles of the wingthorn rose, Rosa omeiensis, are touch-me-nots. The bed of nails plant, Solanum quitoense, is a relative of the tomato with purple spines on leaves and stems.
Ethereal Epiphytes
An epiphytic epidemic is located in the ethereal steamy sauna suite of the greenhouse. Leave terrestrial trappings behind and enter the world of air plants.
Find the dancing ladies along the stem of the butterfly orchid, Psychopsis papilio. In contrast to the white dove orchid, Peristeria elata, view the first true black orchid, Fredclarkeara After Dark ‘Black Diamond.’ Being in the company of these torrid tropicals can provoke an orchid fever that can last a lifetime.
Succulent Splendor
Succulents are the dehydration experts of the plant kingdom. Their design adaptations to dry environments make them strange. The climbing onion vine grows from a bulb but has no leaves only a vertical tangle of stems that twines around whatever it can find.
Living stone plants, Lithops, are minimalists who survive by mimicry. Native to deserts where water is scarce and unpredictable, they blend in with the surroundings for protection.
The tarantula cactus, Cleistocactus winteri, gives visitors goose-bumps with its fuzzy spiny covered long flexible stems resembling tarantula spider legs.
Valentine Plants
Hearts and flowers are symbols of love. Many plants with heart-shaped leaves or flowers make showing ardor easy. McMillan Greenhouse is a hotbed of love plants.
The wax vine, Hoya kerrii, has cookie cutter succulent heart-shaped leaves. Love-lies-bleeding, Amaranthus caudatus, is a dramatic flower with long red dreadlock blooms spilling to the ground.
Love-in-a-puff, Cardiospermum halicacabum, hides its heart inside a brown papery balloon like pod. Pop the pod and find the love.
Bizarre Botanicals
Dr. Mellichamp and Paula Gross, assistant director of the botanical garden, have co-authored a book highlighting 78 of the hundreds of wonderfully weird plants under their oversight at McMillan Greenhouse entitled Bizarre Botanicals: How to Grow String-of-Hearts, Jack-in-the-Pulpit, Panda Ginger, and Other Wonderful Plants.
The weird plant museum appeals to children and adults and the novice and the nerd. McMillan Greenhouse is free and open to the public Monday through Saturday 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. and Sunday from 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.
Sources
- Mellichamp, Larry and Paula Gross. Bizarre Botanicals: How to Grow String-of-Hearts, Jack-in-the-Pulpit, Panda Ginger, and Other Wonderful Plants. Portland: Timber Press, 2010.
- Tate, Lori K.“Window to the World,” Our State magazine online, July 2011.
- Tour of UNC-Charlotte McMillan Greenhouse on November 8, 2011.
Arlene Marturano - Arlene Marturano, an educator, consultant, master gardener, and writer advocates gardens as a context and gardening as a tool for ...
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