Alicia Ortego
Tropical flora
Do you know that Cameroon is home to the world's third biggest botanical garden, as ranked by botanical gardens? Apparently only surpassed by London and Cape Town. It was the Germans who, at the end of XIX century, decided to make a centerpiece for acclimatization and to introduce exotic species, such as coffee, palm oil, coconut, rubber and sugar cane. There is a German cemetery next to the stream that crosses the park, that bears witness to this past. When the Germans were expelled the British took over. It is beautiful and amazing, especially if you contract a guide to tell you about the trees and plants, as you can not recognize many of them.
Among the "known" is the pepper tree and cocoa, among the "unknown" many medicinal plants used by the tribes of Cameroon and nearby countries like Congo and plants that existed in the dinosaur age, such as Cycas. There were not too many flowers for it wasn't the right time, but there was a kind of yellow and red honeycomb that looked for carnivorous and palm trees with trunks covered in sort of "spikes", a natural resource for self-defense against potential predators. A place not to miss, or better, to get lost in.
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