BOTANICAL GARDEN

At Mont-Fleuri, here are 6 hectares of green serenity... Created in 1901 by a Mauritian agronomist, Mr. Dupont, then director of the Botanical Station, this garden prospered until 1934. A great traveller, Dupont brought back vivid memories from his travels: tropical plants, palm trees, spice trees, wood trees, fruit trees and other ornamental shrubs. The garden was first used as a place to experiment with plants, but few of them were later exported.

Today, some two hundred species of native and non-native plants adorn this park-like haven in the south of the capital, with majestic tree specimens, beautiful sloping lawns and remarkable rocks that have contributed so much to the archipelago's reputation. Many of them are covered with climbing plants, ferns and greyish lichens. His Majesty the Palm obviously reigns supreme over this green kingdom, which brings together the six endemic and indigenous varieties of the Seychelles: palm, hauban latanier, latanier fey, latanier millipede and lodoïcée, the latter being better known as coco de mer. We are always amused by these funny cocos, whose female trees bear enormous callipyge-shaped fruits, called cocofesses, and the male trees an enormous phallus, called kitten, tilted downwards. The biggest one, loaded with half a ton of nuts, was planted by the Duke of Edinburgh during an official trip to the archipelago on 19 October 1956. In fact, this one died and another one replaced it, surprisingly productive. A joke of nature! This vegetal and national treasure, protected since 1978, was the subject of new protection decrees in 1994. It is possible to plant one's coconut of the sea, germinated seeds being supplied to the botanical garden by the Environment Division in return for a modest contribution.

From the bottle palm to the blue latanier and from the bamboo palm to the phoenix, via the wax palm, oil palm, raffia and talipot, some thirty other varieties of palm trees are scattered throughout the park, which is also endowed with more than sixty other species of trees. About ten of them are endemic or indigenous (takamaka, hardwood, mat wood...) and about fifty are exotic (eucalyptus, albizzia, pink pope's chalice...). In the forest part of the garden, the vegetation is more luxuriant. Hanging upside down from the branches of tall trees, the fruit bats have found a suitable environment for them. Other animals populate this garden: the frugivorous blue pigeon, the souïmanga, the gecko, of a bright green... They can be seen on tree trunks. The small brown lizards can be seen on tree trunks, while the small brown lizards can be seen scurrying under the leaves of the forest litter. The giant land turtles, on the other hand, are confined to their enclosure in the sunny part of the garden.

You really enjoy strolling for an hour or two in this peaceful zarden (garden), which is criss-crossed by several streams and has three small ponds... One could not spend several days on the island of Mahé without visiting this site, currently managed by the Ministry of External Relations, Planning and the Environment, whose superb Creole architecture can be appreciated opposite the entrance to this Botanical Garden. A superb introduction to the discovery of Seychelles flora.