Chile's renowned botanical garden was almost entirely destroyed by one of the devastating wildfires that recently swept across central Chile. A group of visitors managed to escape the fire by huddling on the park's front lawn, but a greenhouse keeper and three family members died in another part of the garden.
The botanical garden at Vina del Mar is one of the world's largest, and has preserved many endemic plant species as well as rare cactuses. A center for research, the one-and-a-half square mile garden contained more than a thousand species of trees, including some from Easter Island. The garden also contained a large collection of plants from the Juan Fernandez Islands. Chilean officials suspect that the fire destroying the garden was intentionally set. Almost forty square miles were burned on Friday by wildfires in Valparaiso province as well. High temperatures and drought exacerbated by the El Nino weather pattern along with unexpected high winds created the conditions for these catastrophic fires. The park's director is confident that the garden's native plants will recover once the rains return in May. Some exotic plants survived the fire, including the Ginkgo biloba trees from Japan in the "Garden of Peace" section that had also survived the atomic blast in Hiroshima. The information came from Jack Nicas' article "Tragedy, Resilience and a Miracle at Chile's Burned Botanical Garden" in the New York Times from February 5, 2024.
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