Jewels of the Caribbean Exhibit

Jewels of the Caribbean

Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden is a world center for the study and conservation of one of the world’s most fascinating biological regions:  The Caribbean Islands.  These scattered islands are recognized as a biodiversity hotspot – an area of immense biological diversity that is subject to high levels of habitat loss and species extinction.  The thousands of islands and islets that comprise this hotspot represent a small fraction of the landmass of our planet, however, they have approximately 7,000 species found only in this region.

Fairchild is one of the few botanic gardens in the world that conducts research on this unique group of plants and displays them as part of its collections.  The Jewels of the Caribbean is a unique collection of plantings that demonstrate the diversity of the Caribbean flora in the Lowlands area of the garden.  In addition, a number of the region’s rarest and most unusual species are found elsewhere in the Garden. In its living collection, Fairchild has 17 of the genera endemic to the Caribbean islands