Wordless Wednesday!

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Wonder what is inside these pouches?!

Edited to add in the evening: My niece says this is 'Pitcher plant' (wikipedia) . They are basically insect eaters. I saw a few more insect eating plants here, in Kew gardens, London.

Our London Trip - Kew Gardens, the green heaven on earth!

We will never forget our visit to the Kew Gardens (Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew) during our trip to the UK. We felt as if we were inside a designer forest! The whole area was full of different types of trees everywhere, but very well maintained, it was green, green and green, everywhere!

The Kew Garden, is a very old garden maintained by the English Royal families for the past nearly 4 centuries! The history of the place is very very interesting...I have given the links from wikipedia.

They have battery operated cars to take us inside the gardens (40 mts.). We can go for a round first and then decide which area to spend more time.

The best place we liked at the garden, was Palm House, which houses rare plants from all over the world. The best is the Giant Water Lilly pond. The giant leaves at the pond, we saw there, were amazing! Have a look at the pond:

The Giant Waterlilies, Kew Gardens

This pond is quite huge. We took many photos of the pond, but I found this photo, which is displayed below, of a single leaf here in this link, The leaf looks like a plate with edges. You can see the veins also clearly...beautiful!

Giant Waterlilies - close-up of a leaf

All of us were fascinated by the size of the leaf. And then we saw one sample of the roots which spread under the leaf, upside down! We clicked! We were told that a mature leaf can support 45 Kg. if the load is evenly distributed - we can believe this after seeing the display of the roots here:

The beautiful network of roots, under the giant leaf!

More information about these Giant Waterlilies:

• The enormous leaves, which grow to over 2.5m across, have a network of protruding ribs on the underside, which give the leaf buoyancy and stability.
• The flowers are large and fragrant, but relatively short-lived, lasting only 48 hours or so. As each flower matures, it changes colour from white, through pink, to purplish-red, finally sinking below the surface.

Some more beautiful photographs of the leaves and flowers here:

The Lilly flower and the bud!

You can see the reflection of the roof in the water!

A lone leaf and a lone flower...!

The temperature is maintained according to the plants which are housed here, so it was a bit hot. All of us were clicking from all the angles!

I thought this Lilly pond needs one post...such a beautiful place which should never be missed by anybody who visits the U.K.

The full view of the pond is here. Click on it and you will be stunned by the beauty of the place!

This beautiful photograph of the Giant Waterlilly House was taken by David Iliff which shows a panoramic view of the house!

Let me write about the other attractions of the Kew Gardens in the coming posts with lots of photographs!