Lily pond
Leaves 1.5 m across.
Lonelyplanet — CC BY-SA 3.0 de · gailhampshire from Cradley, Malvern, U.K — CC BY 2.0 · Benoît Prieur — CC0 · PalmBeaches974 — CC BY-SA 3.0
The oldest botanical garden in the Southern Hemisphere, named after Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam, the first prime minister of independent Mauritius. It began as a private garden in the eighteenth century, and around 1770 the French botanist Pierre Poivre turned it into a garden of spice trees and rare plants. Its most famous sight is the pond of giant Amazon water lilies, whose huge round leaves grow more than a metre and a half across, with flowers that open white and turn pink the next day. The garden has dozens of palm species, including the talipot palm, which flowers once after decades and then dies, spice trees such as clove, nutmeg and cinnamon, and ebony trees, along with giant tortoises and a deer enclosure. Tickets are sold at the entrance, where licensed guides offer to explain the plants for a fee, per visitor guides. The garden is large and sunny, so bring water and a hat and come in the morning.
Leaves 1.5 m across.
Flowers only once.
Clove and nutmeg.
Pamplemousses, about 11 km north-east of Port Louis
Its pond of giant Amazon water lilies, with round leaves more than a metre and a half across.