The botanical garden of Bangladesh Agricultural University (BAU) in Mymensingh holds about 1,800 species of vascular plants, according to a recent study, about 410 of them trees. The collection includes rare, endangered and threatened species.
The garden covers about 25 acres on the bank of the Old Brahmaputra. It was founded in 1963 by the university's Department of Crop Botany and is now an important site for plant conservation, teaching and research.
Its plants come from home and abroad: avocado, African tulip tree, jacaranda, tabebuia, durian, nageshwar champa, nux vomica, persimmon, passion fruit, raj ashok, sal, sarpagandha, golden ashok and yellow kanchan are among many others.
Students from several faculties learn plant identification there, and MS and PhD researchers draw on the collection for work on identification, conservation and individual species.
Outside classes it is also a place to rest, with benches along the river from which boats can be watched on the Old Brahmaputra.
Keeping so many species together inside an agricultural university makes the garden a living store of the country's plant genetic resources and biodiversity.
The article is by Mahfuza Akter Ema, a second-year student in BAU's Faculty of Veterinary Science.
Photo: Ashis Saha / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Source: Desh Rupantor
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