Aaaaaaah — eeeya eeeyaaaaa — eeeyaaaaa eeeyaaaaah!
Just put me in a loin cloth and I release my inner Tarzan!
You can climb into the trees yourself (loin cloth and jungle vine are optional)
when you visit the University of British Columbia’s Botanical Garden and Centre for Plant Research.
The UBC Botanical Garden has been operating since 1916. It
covers about 44 hectares on either side of one of the most beautiful avenues to
drive or cycle in all of Vancouver, Marine Drive.
The garden south
of Marine Drive is called the David C.
Lam Asian Garden. Mr. Lam was the 25th Lieutenant Governor of British Columbia (the Queen’s
representative in our province).
The Asian Garden is a wonderful way to remember Mr. Lam, who
passed away in 2010. The garden is a Pacific coastal temperate rainforest whose towering western red cedar, Douglas fir, grand fir, western hemlock, and red alder
trees shelter a wide variety of imported plants from Asia.
Among the most beautiful are massive numbers of rhododendron plants. Rhododendrons are
flowering shrubs that grow in many parts of the world, including the Himalayas,
southeast Asia, and New Guinea.
Most of the garden’s immense trees are second-growth, which means that they date from after the UBC campus
was logged around 1916. Two Douglas firs, though, are about 500 years old.
Many trails criss-cross the Asian Garden. One of them is wobbly: the wonderful Greenheart Canopy Walkway, which opened in August of 2008. You have just got to check it out for yourself!
Now, did you know that a forest has layers? Each layer often has distinct plants, insects, and animals.
The lowest is the dark, damp forest
floor.
Next up, a few metres above the ground, is the shady understory. Plants need large leaves to
flourish here.
The higher canopy
is made up of the crowns (branches and leaves) of trees. And the few trees
tall enough to stick up above everything else, into bright sunlight, make up the
lofty emergent layer.
The Greenheart Canopy Walkway is a 308-metre-long elevated
trail that lets you climb as high as 22 metres above the forest’s floor.
It was
developed by the Greenheart Conservation Company, who have found a way to
attach bridges and platforms to the trees without harming the trees in any way.
It makes for a pretty bouncy walk … it felt so funny, I
laughed all the way!
This is the Observation Tower, the highest point on the
Walkway:
You can look all the way down immense trees …
and all the way up …
Many of you will already know that I grew up in British
Columbia’s coastal rainforest, north of the community of Bella Bella. It always
feels good to be back in the shady forest! The ocean is nearby, too: we’re just
100 metres above Georgia Strait here.
My buddy Dave liked to climb trees when he was a kid. He
thought this was a great way to get up tall trees without the skinned knees.
There’s a bit of Tarzan in us all! Still, the next time I
think about climbing a tree, I’m going to check to see if there’s a canopy
walkway available.
I’ll tell you more about the sections of the UBC Botanical
Garden that lie north of Marine Drive
in an upcoming post.
Story © S. Clouthier
Video of Johnny Weismuller courtesy soldierwhy
Rhododendron photos courtesy Wendy Cutler/Flickr
Other photos © S. Clouthier
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