Tsukuba Botanical Garden

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The Tsukuba Botanical Garden (筑波実験植物園, 14 hectares, 36 acres) is a major botanical garden located near the University of Tsukuba at 4-1-1 Amakubo, Tsukuba, Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan. It is open daily except Mondays; an admission fee is charged.

As a research branch of the National Science Museum of Japan, the garden is one of Japan's foremost botanical research facilities and also provides public education. It currently contains about 5000 taxa of domestic and exotic plants from temperate and tropical regions around the world, with a particular emphasis on vascular plants of central Japan, East Asian ferns, Cycadaceae, Colocasia, and South American orchids.

The garden's outdoor collections are arranged into the following areas: Evergreen Broad-leaved Forest Section, Temperate Coniferous Forest Section, Warm-temperate Deciduous Broad-leaved Forest Section, Cool-temperate Deciduous Broad-leaved Forest Section, Shrubs Section, Sandy and Gravelly Sections, Montane Grassland Section (High Altitudes), Montane Grassland Section (Low Altitudes), Rookeries Section (Coastral), Rookeries Section (High Altitudes), Marsh Plants Section, and Hygrophytes and Aquatic Plants Sections.

The garden also contains three greenhouses:

  • Tropical Resource Plants House (about 550 m², 17.5m high) - useful plants from the tropics.
  • Tropical Rain Forest House (about 24 meters high) - two rooms for Lowland and Montane climates, emphasizing plants of Asian-Pacific regions. The Montane room conserves species such as fagaceous, ericaceous, and orchidaceous plants with high diversities in South-east Asia.

As of 2007 the garden supports eight researchers in plant taxonomy, with ongoing studies in cytotaxonomy to determine the number and shape of chromosomes, molecular biology based on DNA sequencing, chemotaxonomy using secondary metabolites, and plant morphology based on branching systems and pedology.

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