To make the best of the butterfly season and water lilies’ peak season, Kaohsiung is promoting a city tour that connects Lotus Pond (蓮池潭) in Zuoying District (左營) and the butterfly garden at Jinshi Lake (金獅湖) in Sanmin District (三民).
The Kaohsiung Tourism Bureau has planted Victoria water lilies at the southern end of the artificial lake, adjacent to a waterskiing area, bureau Director Hsu Chuan-sheng (許傳盛) said.
With the help of horticulture experts, the lilies have grown beautifully, with their leaves extending up to 1.5m in diameter, much to the delight of visitors, Hsu said.
Photo: Ko Yu-hao, Taipei Times
The Victoria amazonica water lily belongs to the family of Nymphaeaceae and has large disc-shaped leaves that lie flat on the water surface, he said.
Its leaves can grow to between 1m and 3m in diameter and can support between 50kg and 70kg — equal to the weight of three children, Hsu said.
However, the director was quick to add that boarding the lilies is prohibited for safety reasons, stressing that the plants are for viewing only.
The leaves of a Victoria water lily can cover an area between 6m2 and 10m2 if they are fully unfolded.
Its flowers are known for their rich fragrance and for changing color overnight from white to pink, he said.
The butterfly garden at Jinshi Lake is the largest butterfly house in the nation, and visitors can observe hundreds of butterflies of 30 different families during the summer, including the swallowtail butterfly, Pieridae, Nymphalidae and the Lycaenidae, he said.
The butterfly garden is a popular site for ecological summer camps for children, he said.
The pond and the lake are in downtown Kaohsiung and can easily be reached via public transport, Hsu said.
Tourists can join a city tour, while local residents need not travel to Tainan’s Beihe District (白河) if they want to see giant water lilies, he added.
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
IN FULL SWING: Recall drives against lawmakers in Hualien, Taoyuan and Hsinchu have reached the second-stage threshold, the campaigners said Campaigners in a recall petition against Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Yen Kuan-heng (顏寬恒) in Taichung yesterday said their signature target is within sight, and that they need a big push to collect about 500 more signatures from locals to reach the second-stage threshold. Recall campaigns against KMT lawmakers Johnny Chiang (江啟臣), Yang Chiung-ying (楊瓊瓔) and Lo Ting-wei (羅廷瑋) are also close to the 10 percent threshold, and campaigners are mounting a final push this week. They need about 800 signatures against Chiang and about 2,000 against Yang. Campaigners seeking to recall Lo said they had reached the threshold figure over the
RSS