Booo-tiful Botany

Just like the rest of us, Mother Nature has a dark side. It’s not all sunsets and dewy roses, you know.
The UBC Botanical Garden is embracing that dark side with a special Halloween celebration that’s a hit with goblins and green thumbs alike. On Saturday, October 27, families are invited to hunt for weird and wicked plant life as they embark on a scavenger hunt that takes them from one corner of the garden to another. At each station they’ll learn about a creepy or unusual plant and get a Halloween treat to boot.

Oh, come on, you may be thinking. How creepy can a plant be? Well, how about Deadman’s Fingers, which produces edible fruit pods that hang like a lifeless, blue hand? And then, when you squeeze it, totally gross juice oozes out. That’s pretty darn creepy.

Also on the Halloween theme, you’ll discover the Weeping Katsura, whose dried-up leaves smell like burnt sugar when you crush them. It’s known colloquially as the Candy Tree, and pausing here to munch a treat or two gives garden staff the opportunity to teach kids a little about the life cycle of a tree and the changes it goes through in the fall.