Exotic orchid blossoms at university's Botany Conservatory

The university’s Botany Conservatory celebrates the new academic year with the blossoming of its exotic orchid Pleurothallis pectinata. This unique plant species (most likely, the only one in Russia) was brought to Siberia from Brazil. The orchids belong to the collection of tropical plants and account for 80 species in the Conservatory collection. They vary in size from 3-4 cm to 1 meter. The university collection is the largest botanical research facility in Krasnoyarsk Krai and holds about 2000 species, many of which are the unique representatives of their species beyond the Urals.

Elena A. Selenina, the director of the Botany Conservatory, who has spent 11 years looking after the university plant collection, says that it provides opportunities both for teaching and research projects. “The collection is a great learning tool and the focal point of botany teaching and research at the Institute of Arts and Sciences, Siberian Federal University. The university botany professors regularly take students to the conservatory to provide them with an opportunity to study plants more closely than they can from slides and texts. In fact, it is the only facility in the city that studies plants, with other educational institutions' researchers and students benefiting from it”

The conservatory staff assists numerous visitors seeking information and advice, provides facilities for teaching and research and looks after various plants, many of which are as fragile as the orchids now blooming in the university’s Botany Conservatory.

The Director of the Conservatory is Ms. Elena A. Selenina. She can be contacted at selenina@lan.krasu.ru

Pleurothallis pectinata

Gongora armenia

5 september 2007