Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden Review (Adalyn)

This past week in Cape Town has been really busy and fun! My favorite activity of the week was our visit to the Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden. I saw many different native South African species of plants. There were tons of unique types of flowers, succulents, rare cycads, and so many varieties of aloe. The hills and paths were filled with many blooming flowers that I had never seen before. 

The garden was beautiful, but also educational, which made my mom happy. While walking through the hills, I thought that I saw a hummingbird but it was actually a South African bird called a sun bird. I thought it was just a different name for the same bird but they are actually completely different types of birds and not even the same species. They look the same because of something called convergent evolution.  Convergent evolution is where different species evolve with very similar evolutionary characteristics to help them adapt to the same types of environments and conditions even though they are oceans apart. So they may have the same type of beak, wings, etc but they are not genetically the same.  We also walked through an area filled with plants called Cycads. These plants are rare and many are endangered.  Even small cycads only around 3 feet tall can be worth over 100,000 USD!  Kirstenbosch had an entire trail dedicated to them which was cool. 

My favorite part of the garden was an area called the  Fragrance Garden. All the flowers there smelt amazing and were really pretty. It was very relaxing to smell all of the different scents, feel the different textures of the leaves, and read about their evolutionary adaptations to the Cape Town environment. 

Overall, I would give the Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden an 8.5/10.  I would give it this rating because it was beautiful, uncrowded, and interesting but I think we spent too much time there.