Orto Botanico

At last my Euro-blogging ends with this visit to Rome's Orto Botanico, a terraced Mediterranean gem in the Trastevere district, a pleasant, easy walk from the ancient downtown. Watch a video here. That's Phoenix dactylifera leaning over the path.





Mediterranean-style gardens in the five places in the world where you find beds filled with lavender, santolina, cistus, rosemary, and phlomis must all look the same right about now, at the end of a long, dry summer.



We got less than a 10th of an inch of rain last night in San Francisco. Not at all enough to pronounce it fall. And we still have October's Indian summer on the horizon.

















They have quite a cactus and aloe collection in one of the greenhouses.







Pachypodium namaqunum:



Nearby another old greenhouse, built below grade...



sat empty inside...



except for a fountain, running eternally.



Fountains and ponds are vital features in a Mediterranean garden.









The stairs are flanked by centuries old plane trees whose leaves have begun to turn brown and fall in Rome, just as they have in California, while London's plane trees were still quite green.



The private papal herb garden that was here originally only became a public botanical garden in the 1880s. Like every place else in Rome, portions of the previous era remain.