The Lae Botanic Gardens are located in Bumneng, Eriku and Lae City in the

Morobe Province Morobe Province is a province on the northern coast of Papua New Guinea. The provincial capital and largest city is Lae. The province covers 33,705 km2, with a population of 674,810 (2011 census), and since the division of Southern Highlands P ...

Papua New Guinea Papua New Guinea (abbreviated PNG; , ; tpi, Papua Niugini; ho, Papua Niu Gini), officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea ( tpi, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niugini; ho, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niu Gini), is a country i ...

. Within this location is the Papua New Guinea Forest Research Unit, the Papua New Guinea National

Herbarium A herbarium (plural: herbaria) is a collection of preserved plant specimens and associated data used for scientific study. The specimens may be whole plants or plant parts; these will usually be in dried form mounted on a sheet of paper (called ...

and the

Lae War Cemetery The Lae War Cemetery, established in 1944, is located adjacent to the Botanical Gardens in the centre of the city of Lae, the capital of Morobe Province, in Papua New Guinea. The cemetery is managed by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. In ...

Description

The Lae Botanic Gardens occupies 38 hectares. The garden mostly consists of natural lowland rain forest with creeks running through. It also contains greenhouses for special

Orchidaceae Orchids are plants that belong to the family Orchidaceae (), a diverse and widespread group of flowering plants with blooms that are often colourful and fragrant. Along with the Asteraceae, they are one of the two largest families of flowering ...

and

Araceae The Araceae are a family of monocotyledonous flowering plants in which flowers are borne on a type of inflorescence called a spadix. The spadix is usually accompanied by, and sometimes partially enclosed in, a spathe (or leaf-like bract). Also ...

collections. The gardens are administered by the Papua New Guinea Forest Research Institute and have approximately 1500 - 2000 plant species. The landscape is dominated my many large buttressed trees which are densely covered by

Epiphytes An epiphyte is an organism that grows on the surface of a plant and derives its moisture and nutrients from the air, rain, water (in marine environments) or from debris accumulating around it. The plants on which epiphytes grow are called phoroph ...

and climbers. Forestrydepartment

Papua New Guinea Forest Research Institute

The Forest Research Institute is located on Huon Road in the grounds of the Botanical Gardens. The building was donated by the Government of Japan as a symbol of friendship and cooperation in 1989 .The Forest Research Institute is a government agency that conducts research on the sustainable management and wise resource utilization of forest resources. The Forest Research Institute also provides a scientific basis for the management of PNG’s forest resources through research activities.

Papua New Guinea National Herbarium

The

was established in the 1940s and is the largest plant specimen collection in Papua New Guinea with about 300,000 specimens including 2335 type specimens. There are 100,000 spirit collections. The Herbarium holds a representative plant collection from the neighboring regions such as the

Indonesian provinces Indonesian is anything of, from, or related to Indonesia, an archipelagic country in Southeast Asia. It may refer to: * Indonesians, citizens of Indonesia ** Native Indonesians, diverse groups of local inhabitants of the archipelago ** Indonesia ...

, the

Solomon Islands Solomon Islands is an island country consisting of six major islands and over 900 smaller islands in Oceania, to the east of Papua New Guinea and north-west of Vanuatu. It has a land area of , and a population of approx. 700,000. Its capita ...

, Western

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guine ...

Malaysia Malaysia ( ; ) is a country in Southeast Asia. The federation, federal constitutional monarchy consists of States and federal territories of Malaysia, thirteen states and three federal territories, separated by the South China Sea into two r ...

and Tropical

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

The Herbarium also holds collections of a number of important collectors including

Leonard John Brass Leonard John Brass (17 May 1900 – 29 August 1971) was an Australian and American botany, botanist, plant collecting, botanical collector and explorer. Early life Brass was born at Toowoomba, Queensland. He was trained at the Queensland Herbar ...

Lyndley Craven Lyndley Alan Craven (3 September 1945 – 11 July 2014) was a botanist who became the Principal Research Scientist of the Australian National Herbarium. Lyndley ("Lyn") Craven worked for the CSIRO plant taxonomy unit of the New Guinea Survey Gro ...

, J R Croft,

Ruurd Dirk Hoogland Ruurd Dirk Hoogland (1922 Leeuwarden - 18 November 1994 Paris) was a Dutch-born explorer and naturalist, who migrated to Australia and made numerous botanical expeditions to New Guinea, Oceania and Europe. He was an expert on the family Cunoniaceae. ...

, Andrée Millar, R Pullen, J C Saunders,

Richard Schodde Richard Schodde, OAM (born 23 September 1936) is an Australian botanist and ornithologist. Schodde studied at the University of Adelaide, where he received a BSc (Hons) in 1960 and a PhD in 1970. During the 1960s he was a botanist with the C ...

, Wayne Takeuchi and J S Womersley. The herbarium ranks third in size in South East Asia. In recent years the Herbarium has been involved in data-basing and digitizing its collections. The Herbarium is collaborating with the National Herbarium of NSW on the project plants of Papua New Guinea.

Notes

References

External links

Old photos of Botanical Gardens
{{authority control Botanical research institutes Botanical gardens in Papua New Guinea Lae Herbaria in Oceania