Botanic Garden and Museum

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(Sept 9) If you have some free time in Sapporo, it might be worthwhile to check of the Botanic Garden of Hokkaido University, which includes a small but well-stocked natural history museum. These photos cover only a fraction of what is available.

The Greenhouse features tropical and desert plants that will not grow in Hokkaido’s climate

Banana Tree

Anthurium

Cacti

Bridge before Alpine Garden

The Alpine Garden is a large rock garden with plants that grow in Hokkaido’s mountains.

Alpine Garden

Alpine Garden

Alpine Garden

(There is also a Canadian Rock Garden featuring North American plants, but we chose to skip it.)

The Natural Woodland attempts to recreate the look of Hokkaido’s original forests.

Natural Forest

September is probably not the best time to vist the Rose Garden, but it still doesn’t look too bad.

Rose Garden

The Northern Peoples Ethnobotanical Garden is for plants used by the Ainu and other indigenous peoples of North Asia.

Ethnobotanical Garden

Garden Bridge

The “Museum and National Treasures” has mounted specimens of Hokkaido wildlife.

Brown Bear

Ezo Wolf

Boars

Flying Squirrel

Sea Eagle

This is a tanuki or raccoon dog.

Tanuki

I hope North American readers will agree that this does not look very much like a raccoon, and that the common practice of translating “tanuki” as “raccoon” is mistaken. (Actually the tanuki is more closely related to a fox.)

All posts from this trip.