Full Flower

It's a jungle out there-and nowhere more pleasingly so than the tropical oasis of the Marie Selby Botanical Gardens, on an eight-acre bayfront peninsula near downtown Sarasota.

Selby Gardens is world-renowned for its collection of 6,000 tropical orchids, many of them rare and endangered. Orchids aren't the only natural wonders. A botanical garden is different from a park largely because of its educational and research components, and it's a "gee-whiz" experience wandering down paths lined with hundreds of different kinds of plants labeled with their common and scientific names and countries of origin. They're remarkable. Check out the bombax ceiba, or red silk cotton tree from Asia, with its badminton-birdie-like bright red blossoms, each nine inches wide, that turn into snow-white cottony fluffs in the spring, or the Moreton Bay fig tree from Australia, with giant buttress roots shaped like elephants. There's a chenille plant with velvety crimson tendrils so oversized that national garden writers have made pilgrimages to photograph it, and stands of giant bamboo that clack like wind chimes in the bayfront breeze.

On the property are two historic homes: the 1920s Mediterranean-Revival residence of garden namesake Marie Selby (her husband, Bill, owned an oil company that later merged with Texaco); and the 1930s white clapboard Southern Colonial home of Christy Payne, one of Bill's colleagues. Today, they provide a beautiful backdrop for weddings, plant fairs and music festivals.

A few years ago, Selby Gardens was named one of the top 10 botanical gardens in the country, and it's easy to see why. It's small enough to tour in a couple of hours, yet so packed with pleasures that you can't possibly absorb it in one visit. More than 165,000 people enjoy its many splendors each year. It's open daily (except Christmas) from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Call (941) 366-5731 or visit www.selby.org.

Ilene Denton is editor of SARASOTA Magazine's Homebuyer.