Under greenhouses, the tropics
Audio 02:34
Plants from three continents are housed in the tropical greenhouse of the Jardin des Plantes in Paris.
© RFI / Florent Guignard
By: Florent Guignard
8 mins
A tropical trip to Paris?
Meet under the Large Greenhouses of the Jardin des Plantes, the distant heritage of the first European explorers who brought back plants from hot countries to grow them despite the temperate climate.
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A powerful wind blows over Paris that day, to such an extent that the authorities have ordered the closure of the Jardin des Plantes, like all the parks of the French capital.
Barely 7 degrees in temperature felt, and yet, in this former Royal Garden founded by Louis XIII in the 17th century, dense vegetation from the tropics grows regardless of the weather.
Sheltered from the wind and the cold, under cathedrals of glass and steel.
"
When you get there, you say
:
'It's too good!'
“,
Still marvels years after Noëlle Parisi, the head of the large greenhouses of the Jardin des Plantes of the National Museum of Natural History in Paris.
And it's true that they are "too" beautiful, these plants from all over the world, which here form a veritable tropical forest, a jungle in the heart of Paris, in the most imposing of greenhouses, built in the 1930s. "
We find plants that come from both Amazonia, the Congo Basin and Southeast Asia,
says Noëlle Paris,
and everything is mixed in a merry tote.
"
The survivor of winter 1945
Three continents in one, in this imported forest where trees, bananas, lianas, ferns, orchids and even palm trees abound, like the “
Great Sabal
”, as it is called here, a
Sabal bermunada
, native to the Caribbean, whose crown is n is not far from reaching the glass ceiling, 18 meters high.
He is the dean of all plants, from here and all Parisian greenhouses.
The only survivor of the winter of 1945. We are just after the war, and there is no coal to heat the Parisians.
Too bad for greenhouses, whose boiler is cut.
The plants are sacrificed.
The "
big chilly
", accustomed to tropical temperatures, need sun, heat, and humidity.
75% humidity and temperatures between 20 degrees in winter, and up to 40 ° C when the summer sun hits the glass.
Constant humidity and temperature, so that here, as in the tropics, plants grow at the speed of light.
And especially the ficus.
One of them is particularly remarkable, with its roots coming out of the earth, which form a long wall of cellulose.
"
This is extraordinary in terms of growth,"
enthuses the manager of the greenhouses at the Jardin des Plantes.
We're gonna prune it off next month, and if you come back in three months, it'll be like we haven't done anything
!
"
The root of a ficus with "extraordinary" growth.
© RFI / Florent Guignard
What is a greenhouse for?
The first heated greenhouse in Paris dates back to Louis XIV, who had just received a sumptuous gift, for the time: a coffee plant, offered by the mayor of Amsterdam.
A form of plant diplomacy.
The first greenhouses had only a medical utility, for medicinal plants, then scientific with the development of botany and the discovery of new species brought back by European explorers.
But very quickly, the economic dimension takes precedence.
Plants are a source of wealth that we import and export to our colonies.
The current vanilla grown on Reunion Island, for example, comes from a plant brought back from South America, multiplied in a greenhouse before being shipped to the Indian Ocean.
The globalization of the economy started with plants.
The majesty of greenhouses, and the richness they shelter, literally, also gives them a symbolic dimension.
What is a greenhouse for?
To show its power.
“
Greenhouses are a showcase of the size and resources of the State,
analyzes Noëlle Parisi.
We can go far away, bring back plants, cultivate them.
It is a showcase of what we are able to do.
You also have to put yourself in the shoes of the people of the time.
It was fabulous to see plants growing in Africa or America, where we were not going, since there was no plane.
Even today, the trip remains fabulous.
QUESTION OF THE WEEK
“
10 years after the nuclear disaster, how is nature in Fukushima
?
"
Rather not too bad, judging by images captured in the forests of Fukushima, virgin of any human presence for 10 years.
We see macaques, foxes, civets, and even an Asian black bear, the collared bear, believed to have disappeared in the region.
Bees forage on flowering rhododendrons, and wild boars produce young.
Yes, life is resuming in Fukushima.
Because the people in the radiation-stricken area have deserted.
As if animals were less afraid of radioactivity than humans.
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