基础英语－conservatory※Greenhouse

I went to the Conservatory in the Beijing Botanical Gardens as a little reporter on Valentine's Day. When I walked into the hall, thousands of roses in different colors jumped into my sight. Roses are usually red or pink, but I saw blue, green and even black roses here. These beautiful and colorful roses, as well as other flowers, were used to decorate the gate of a garden, or were made into heart-shaped rings. Beautiful orchids(兰花) were white, yellow, red, and purple. Some were like butterflies, and some were like spiders. The Conservatory became an ocean of flowers on that day.

The Conservatory is a magic world because there are many kinds of plants here that I can’t see in Beijing. Most of the plants are tropical plants, so the Conservatory is very hot.
The first exhibition room I saw was the desert plants room. When I walked in the room, I felt as hot as if I were walking in a desert on a byway. An interesting tree like a bottle drew my attention. The tree is called bottle tree because the trunk not only looks like a bottle, but also can be used as a bottle to hold water. Do you know how much water the trunk can keep in full? I got such a fright when I found out it can keep 2 tons of water during the rainy season. So if traveling in the desert with a bottle tree, you won’t worry about water because you can drink the water in the trunk when you are thirsty. At another place in the room, I found a ‘pumpkin farmland’. It had a lot of cactus（仙人球）.The stripped flower patterns of the cactus are just like those of pumpkins. One of them had a notice, which said that it is the largest cactus in China. It is made up of six smaller cacti, which are linked together.


As I got into the tropical rain forest room, I was wondering why some notice boards were covered by plastic. Just at the moment, a warning board came into my sight: you may be caught by sudden rain at any time. It is unbelievable to have rain under the roof！But it really happened. So you’d better take a rain coat with you and take care of your camera.

I was very surprised when I saw the meat-eating plants like monkey cup（猪笼草）and flycatcher（捕蝇草）. You know, most plants are food for others, but this time, I saw the plants which ‘catch’ insects for ‘soup’! I was very curious about how the meat-eating plants ‘eat’. Do you know how they catch insects? First, they attract the insects by their beautiful colors. When the insects touch the trigger hairs(触毛), their leaves snap shut. Then, they wait until the insects become nutritious（有营养的）soup and take the delicious ‘food’.
The Conservatory is beautiful and magical. I saw a lot of interesting plants and learned a lot about plants as well.

Note: “Greenhouse” is a better term to use here than “conservatory”. Conservatory usually refers to a room that is attached to a house.