On December 21, the XI annual festival of orchids, carnivorous plants and succulents “Tropical Winter” starts in the botanical garden of the Moscow State University “Aptekarsky Ogorod”. Visitors will be able to see rare tropical orchids of different shapes and sizes, smelling of chocolate, cookies, cheese, cinnamon and fruit.
The festival features bee orchids, slipper orchids with huge lips, hairy orchids, tiger orchids. Some species are so rare that they practically do not occur in nature.
In addition, the festival will show the world’s largest water lilies, cocoa, guava, papaya, papyrus, sugar cane, tropical cacti, coffee trees, mangoes, pineapples, bromeliads, ferns, lianas, blooming amorphophallus with the smell of rotten meat. Guests will also be shown a collection of cacti, agaves, live stones.
The rarest and most remarkable specimens can be found in the thickets of palm trees and near other large plants in the greenhouse.
“The festival has already gone beyond greenhouses — it’s hard to believe, but snowdrops, primroses, rhododendron, forsythia, hellebores have bloomed abnormally early in the garden under the open sky and snowdrops are about to bloom! The buds of magnolias swelled. The peak of warming will be on December 19 — snowdrops, obviously, will also bloom,” said Alexey Reteyum, director of the Apothecary Garden.
New plants will bloom throughout the festival. The exposition is updated several times a week. As part of the “Tropical Winter”, concerts are organized in the “Aptekarsky Garden”.
The cost of a full entrance ticket is 300 rubles, a preferential one is 200 rubles. You can buy it on the website of the Apothecary’s Garden.
