SAEDNEWS: Glass houses around the world are well known and have a very unique beauty, and the first large glass house in the world was the size of four football fields.
According to SAEDNEWS, After a five-year restoration, the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew in London has reopened its grand Victorian glasshouse, featuring some of the largest glass doors and originally built during the Victorian era.
The world’s largest glasshouse has been renovated for the first time in its history using pure metal, with more than 5,280 liters (1,160 gallons) of paint—enough to cover an area the size of four football fields—and 15,000 replacement glass panes.
The greenhouse will open to the public on Saturday, May 5. This massive glass structure now hosts a botanical collection of around 10,000 plants from temperate climates around the world.
It is also home to rare and endangered species that are protected by the botanical garden. Among the 1,500 species of diverse temperate plants, Encephalartos woodii—a very rare South African cycad—has disappeared from the wild and now exists only in botanical gardens and private collections.
This plant is known as the “loneliest plant in the world” because only male specimens of its kind survive. Scott Taylor, an expert gardener overseeing the glasshouse collection, explained that plant collectors are still searching for a female cycad so that Encephalartos woodii can be propagated. He also emphasized the importance of maintaining a backup specimen for each endangered species.
Mr. Taylor added: “We preserve species here that exist in very small numbers in the wild and are vulnerable to threats such as fire and earthquakes.”
