Royal Botanical Garden in Perediniya

Peradeniya is a small city, with about 30,000.  It's a suburb of Kandy, the second largest city in Sri Lanka.  But it has something totally special.  The Royal Botanical Gardens.

The Royal Botanical Gardens were initially established in 1371 by King Wickramabahu III as a part of his residence.  Subsequent kings added to the gardens, and they eventually became a public space. Today, they are the largest botanical gardens of Sri Lanka, and promoted as the finest in Asia. 

I'm not sure if they are the finest in Asia.  But they are amazing for sure!

 

We wandered through the gardens for about 4 hours.  The flowers were pretty.  But the trees!!!  Big! Tall! With crazy leaves and roots and branches and fruit!!!   Wow!!!

And....more monkeys!  Way up close!  Without any food bribing.  And more bat trees!!! Apparently, 24,000 fruit bats live in the gardens.  I believe it...

Pictures

1-The roots/buttresses on these trees were amazing!  These trees are not gonna fall down!

2- The cannon ball tree.  The tree can grow to 35 meters in height. The fruit takes 12-18 months to ripen, are about 25cm in diameter, and can contain up to 550 seeds!

3 - This momma monkey was cleaning her baby. About 3 feet away from me!

4 - Royal palms.  Very impressive!

5- Part of the flower garden.  

6 - These trees were so tall and skinny.  I think they were designed by Dr Seuss!

7- A bat tree!  There were about 10 bat trees!

8- This tree looks like it played Dr Mixup with itself.  Anyone else play Dr Mixup when they were young??

9- A huge fern!  It looked like the ferns, which were about 5 feet tall, were growing out of big fat fingers!

10- Double coconut trees.  The coconuts take up to 6-7 years to mature. They measure about 50 cm in diameter and weigh about 30 kg.  Note the fun bendy Dr Seuss pine like tree in the background.

11- Some pretty flowers on a tree.

12- A fun little suspension bridge.  The sign at the beginning said max 6 people.  When we arrived about 12 people were already on the bridge.  I waited...

Interesting fact...

Many attractions with an admission fee, like the gardens, have different admission prices for Sri Lankans and for foreigners.  I paid 2,000 rupees (about $15 CDN) to enter.  Toby paid 100 rupees (about 70 cents CDN).