Olbrich Botanical Gardens: Orchids, Tillandsias, Carnivores

These pictures are of some of the tillandsias, orchids, and carnivorous plants at Olbrich Botanical Gardens. These are some of my favorite plants because they're weird! I like unusual plants.

 To start things off, here's a Tillandsia that is blooming. You can see the whitish blooms near the bottom of the picture.

 Here's another Tillandsia bunch. They're related to bromeliads and make pups. If they aren't separated, then they grow in a big clump like this one!

 There's a couple of tillandsias up here as well as some orchid blooms. This was a very pretty display.

 Orchid blooms on the left, succulents in the middle!

 Here's one more beautiful Tillandsia blooming.

 This is a cute little orchid flower! It's from the genus Maxillaria.

 Okay, this is just a tropical plant that I like. It's a Brugmansia, also called an Angel's Trumpet.

 Up close and personal with an orchid bloom! There is such a huge variety of orchid flowers that I feel like I always see a new one at every botanical garden I visit. This one was new to me!

 Here's the plant these beautiful flowers are attached to. The root ball is so weird and the flowers hang below the leaves. It's very different and very cool.

 A view from below the Brugmansia straight up at the flowers. I have a Brugmansia that I've been growing since January from seed. It hasn't flowered this year but I look forward to when it does!

 Here's a bromeliad flowering. Much like tillandsias, bromeliads usually don't require much soil, if any. They reproduce by making pups and after the plant flowers, it dies.

 This was a really neat part of the garden that I haven't seen at any other botanical garden yet. It's a carnivorous plant display! In this picture, you can see a lot of Venus flytraps. I'd love to have some carnivorous plants someday but I don't have the money to put together a nice terrarium for them right now. They need a lot of humidity to thrive.

 Here's a sundew. These are really neat close up. The little sticky droplets are where the insects get stuck so it can eat them.

And lastly, here are several pitcher plants. They look like different types of lettuce, but they're all little pitchers. Bugs fall into them and drown, and then the plant digests them. 

Next time, I'll start showing some photos from the outdoor gardens!