Brief Visit to Missouri Botanical Garden

[OlDoinyo]

I had a chance to drop by the MBG for a couple of hours on Sunday. As I was recovering from minor knee surgery, I was not very mobile and could not visit a great many exhibits. The first location I did get to was the Climatron, a large greenhouse in the shape of a geodesic dome which is dedicated to tropical rain forest flora. I had hoped that it might prove possible to shoot UV inside the structure, but I was disabused of this notion after even 10-second exposures produced only faint, monochromatic images: the 1960s-era glass used on the dome is almost opaque to UV. You can, in fact, see this in a photo taken from the outside (BGR:Sony A900/Steinheil 50/ Baader U2:)

 

 

The dome does not even show up as orange; it is as black as the yellow Chihuly glass onions floating in the decorative pool. This does raise some interesting questions. To what extent is this intentional? Past photos show that the glass is quite transparent to infrared. How is the growth and health of the rainforest plants changed by the near-total exclusion of UV? Or does it matter at all? I am not botanist enough to know, but perhaps someone else here is. The one glass ornament showing orange here was pale cyan to the naked eye.

 

Another shot shows the historic Linnean House just to the northeast, behind the formal rose garden (same camera configuration:)

 

 

The rose blossoms themselves, while visible, are not terribly UV-interesting. More intriguing is the difference in foliage color between midground and background. I believe this is real and not just a processing artifact, but I cannot say much else about it, lacking the knowledge to explain it. The roof of the building appears like bare metal to the naked eye, but the orange color in this photo indicates that the truth is something more complicated. The presence of two batches of bricks in the building's exterior is clearly visible.

 

A final photo shows a reflecting pool with Carl Milles statues on pylons in the middle of it (BGR:Sony A900/Tamron 21/UG11/S8612:)

 

 

The original was underexposed, and I struggled to get good color balance with this frame. The sky reflection is darkened by the fact that the sky light from the background is near maximum polarization. The Linnean house is visible in the distance. Some nicely black Victoria regia pads float in the foreground.

[Andy Perrin]

Pretty interesting, especially the weirdly black dome. I could not make out the two batches of bricks in the second photo -- did you mean on the door?

[Andrea B.]

How is the growth and health of the rainforest plants changed by the near-total exclusion of UV? Or does it matter at all?

 

Green plants mostly absorb yellow sunlight. So I don't think in general plants need much UV, if any. Too much UV can sunburn a green plant just as it can a human. IIRC, plants do need IR light.

This is a good search-the-web question for all of us. :D

Maybe Bjørn knows?

 

Added Later: It was interesting to see some photos from the Missouri Botanical Garden. I use their website as a reference.