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Around 150 km to south from Seoul, near a small town Yongin, there is the
biggest botanical garden of Korea. It is called the "Hantaek Botanical Garden".
In the introductory brochure it is stated, that since 1979 the Foundation
that maintains this botanical garden has collected about 7.2 million plants
of 8000 species including rare, endangered, native, and introduced plants.
This makes it the biggest botanical garden in Korea. Surely it is one of the
biggest botanical gardens I ever visited - and I visited many of them. The
two pearls of this Hantaek Botanical Garden are the "Hosta Collection" and
the "Lotus Collection". In my opinion each of these two collections is
amongst largest in the world (if not the largest). On this photo-page I am
showing these more interesting hosta plants from the Hantaek Hosta Collections.
Name "hosta" is assigned to a rhizomatous perennial which grows mostly
in cooler climate. Hosta belongs to
the Liliaceae family with around 70 species, a herbaceous perennial
treasured for their lovely foliage, which has a range of colour - yellow,
different shades of green, bluish green, varied combinations of green
and white, green and yellow and golden. Their mauve or white bell-shaped
flowers are borne on scapes. They like a cool, shady, environment with
moist but well-drained fertile soil and do not tolerate drought. A native
of the Far East and East Russia, they do not grow naturally in Europe or
America. But they are spread throughout the entire world as favourite
ornamental plants kept by people in their homes. Because hosta are also
native to Korea, the Hantaek Botanical Garden has an impressive collection
of these plants, as I believe probably one amongst largest in the world
(if not the largest one).
Please notice that the last photograph "Fig. 15" below shows the lotus flower on the foreground,
while a lotus pond on the background. Apart from the huge hosta collection, the Hantaek
Botanical Garden has also an extensive collection of lotus plants and flowers. In my opinion
this collection of lotus plants is one amongst the biggest in the world. The only area which
would be comparable to lotus ponds of the Hantaek Botanical Garden would be the "Lake Chini"
in Malaysia, which used to be one of the biggest lotus areas in the world. Unfortunately,
Malaysians unwisely destroyed lotus plants from the Lake Chini, thus loosing their leading
lotus role in the world.
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Fig. 15
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Date of starting of this web page: 3 August 2007.
Date of the latest updating of this web page: 17 August 2007.
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State of subsequent counters of visits to this web page:
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