Can you imagine going to Westwood and finding an amazing botanical garden where admission is free? I am talking about the Mildred Mathias Botanical Garden on the campus of UCLA, the hidden gem of local horticultural delights.
The only thing more amazing about your trip to Westwood will be the availability of free parking (2-hour limit on Hilgard south of Le Conte) since the university is shut down due to Covid-19 and the students and staff who would normally have taken the street curb parking spots have all gone home.
The Botanical Garden is open to the public from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday and from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. The entrance is on the corner of Hilgard and Le Conte Avenues. It’s a great outlet for the whole family with many exotic plants to ogle, especially in the cactus and succulent section. There are benches next to a large pond where you can sit and have lunch a few feet away from what is probably the biggest ongoing convention of turtles — who sun themselves unabashedly on the pond’s edge – for miles around. You can even bring a group and gather with appropriate social distancing in a small amphitheater that is secluded within the garden.
One of the outstanding features of the garden is a large slope near the pond that is planted entirely with bromeliads. Last week I wrote about a bromeliad I that I had never seen before (Puya chilensis) and I am about to do that again. The plant in question is Quesnelia testudo, or turtle-head bromeliad. Its genus name honors the plant explorer Martin Quisnel and its species name testudo means turtle in Latin, a moniker given on account of the way the bromeliad’s bulbous flower head extrudes from the foliage. How ironic that it should be situated just a few feet away from the turtle convention mentioned above. It can grow in either sun or shade but its leaves are spiny so wear gloves when handling it.
In truth, what we call a bromeliad flower is really a collection of bracts, the same appendages which are actually modified leaves and give color to a variety of plants from poinsettias to bougainvilleas to Anthuriums, those long-lasting indoor plants whose heart-shaped plastic-textured horizontal red bracts enclose vertical yellow flower spikes known as spadixes.
Planting bromeliads on a slope makes sense for two reasons and both have to do with drainage. You do not want standing water around bromeliad roots which are typically only for structural support since these plants take in water through the cups formed by their rosetted leaves. Water on a slope is always moving downwards so rot induced from standing water on such terrain is not an issue. The other reason for bromeliad slope planting is the sensitivity many of them have to cold. Cold air, like water, drains off a slope so bromeliads will be less likely to freeze in such a location. In any event, Quesnelia is one of the more cold-tolerant bromeliads, withstanding temperatures down to 25 degrees Fahrenheit.
I have learned that this outstanding plant and other Quesnelias are available through vendors on eBay. Another way to procure uncommon bromeliads would be to make contact with members of the San Fernando Valley Bromeliad Society (sfvbromeliad.homestead.com) which meets once a month in Encino or with the La Ballona Valley Bromeliad Society (bsi.org) that holds monthly meetings in West Los Angeles although such public meetings will probably be on hold for now.
The Mildred Mathias Botanical Garden is famous for its dawn redwood (Metasequoia glyptostroboides), thought to be the tallest representative of its species in North America. It was only in 1944, in a remote part of south-central China, that the first living dawn redwoods were discovered, a species known beforehand exclusively from fossils. That mountainous region of China is the sole habitat of this tree, which is also the only deciduous redwood species. A seedling was planted in this garden in 1948, will grow to one hundred feet tall, and may live for more than a thousand years.
Another arboreal beauty with a long lifespan is the dragon tree (Dracaena draco), two examples of which are growing on the eastern edge of the Mildred Mathias garden in a section devoted to arid zone plants. In their native Canary Island habitat, dragon trees are known to live for several thousand years.
Two of the plants in this section are especially noteworthy because of their blooms. One is a sun-loving Bolivian bromeliad (Puya spathacea) with startling orange-red candelabra branched flower clusters. The other is the Australian silky net-bush (Calothamnus villosus); each of its flowers is a shaggy scarlet mustache.
Tip of the Week: In the Mildred Mathias Garden, a group of tropical vireya rhododendrons from Malaysia are congregated in a special planter whose soil appears to consist solely of peat moss and perlite. Vireya flowers are vibrant yellow, orange, pink or red, long-lasting and often fragrant. Overhead, the high branches of mature trees serve to protect these vireyas from the ravages of sun and wind. In our dry climate, rhododendrons and azaleas – which are members of rhododendrons’ nuclear family — should be grown in high shade, under the cover of tall trees, where the scorch of sun and wind cannot be felt, yet where the ambient light is good and the humidity is somewhat higher than in the open. Placement under trees will also trap a measure of heat that may help Vireyas survive a frost since they are cold sensitive.
