Exotic Beauty (59) : Fishwort

The past years I made several visits to the conservatories of the National Botanic Garden of Belgium where 10.000 (!) plant and tree species originating from the tropics and the subtropics are growing in the greenhouses over there.

Thanks to the warm and moist climate in the conservatories and the intensive maintenance, it’s really amazing what an immense great variety of exotic flowers from all over the world can be seen there, even in the cold winter season !
Flowers whose natural habitat is situated in the rainforest, the mountain forest, isolated islands, deserts, etc……. Places that most of us will never or seldom visit.
Some of the flowers are very rare, extremely colourful or specially shaped.
Others were introduced in Europe by men and became a cultivated species or an ornamental houseplant.

I selected the –to my personal taste- most beautiful flowers that I saw there and made a series of them.

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In English also known as Heart-leaved houttuynia and Lizard’s tail
Dutch name : Moerasanemoon
German name : Molchschwanz (auch Eidechsenschwanz genannt)
Latin name : Houttuynia cordata

Country of origin : The Himalayas, Japan, Korea, southern China

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Not really a spectacular beauty, I fully agree, but this is a very special species !

Around 130 million years ago, the first plants with flowers evolved on earth (previously all plants were totally flowerless).
With a certainty of 98%, scientists identified this Houttuynia cordata as the VERY FIRST flower that ever grew on our planet !!!!!
And the plant still exists !