Visit to the Real Jardin Botanico de Madrid (Royal Botanic Garden Madrid)

Some weeks ago I visited the Real Jardin Botánico (Royal Botanic Garden) in Madrid, and is not only a botanical garden, but also a very prestigious institution for research founded in October 1755.  The day of my visit was a very warm and sunny day, I was expecting a fall scenery but I was told it has been a very mild autumn until recently and that means that the natural cycle of leaves falling did not happened until very late November.

The drawing below shows the layout of the garden and the well organized sections dedicated to plants, and trees from different climates, regions distributed by botanical families and varieties.

Image from the RJBM website

This post is about the first part of my visit and dedicated to the Estufa de las Palmas, a greenhouse built in 1856 used to house tropical and subtropical specimens.  The first section is for cactus and other plants from arid climates.

From this area the greenhouse opens its rooms to tropical and subtropical botanical worlds and is a amazing experience to "travel" in few meters from arid deserts to exuberant tropical landscapes.

This is one of the Plants of the month, the  Cymbidium sp., from the Orchidaceae family, originally growing in tropical and subtropical Asia and NorthAustralia

I found the place somehow so magic that spent quite long time taking photographs trying to capture the spirit of the place, but also enjoying the environment. The next post will be dedicated to outdoors sections.