SUGAR FROM THE SUN

House History:
Southern Exposure      

Because of its southern exposure, this room has the more access to the sun’s rays than any other room in the Conservatory. Originally called the Stove House, and later the Warm Room, this room was renamed once again in 2000 when the sweet fruiting trees of the former Economic House were moved to this space to make room for the new Children’s Garden.
 
In 2003, the National Science Foundation awarded a $1.7 million grant to the Garfield Park Conservatory Alliance to create a living plant exhibit that brings to light the crucial yet widely misunderstood process by which plants harness sunlight energy to produce the food, oxygen and resources we need every day. In March 2008, this historic room will reopen its doors as Sugar from the Sun, a living plant exhibit that immerses people in sunlight, air, water, and sugar - the elements plants use to fuel life on Earth.

A Special Place:
The Age-Old Process of Building With Sunlight  

For millions of years, green plants have been using sunlight, air, and water to build the sugar molecules that sustain life on Earth. For as long as curiosity and inquiry have existed, people have been thinking about plants and how they work. Today, thousands of years later, science has made great progress in the study of photosynthesis, but we still do not fully understand the intricacies of this process. The Sugar from the Sun exhibit is our tribute to the enduring history and complexity of plants, and also to the simplicity of our absolute dependence on them.

The Special Plants:
The Cinnamon Tree    

From the Stove House to the Warm House, and now from the Sweet House to Sugar from the Sun, our cinnamon tree has lived through all four incarnation of this room. At over sixty years old, this tree and its spice-producing bark has a well-respected senior presence in our newly renovated historic greenhouse.

The Special Plants:
Banana Biodiversity    

99.9% of the bananas in the world (including ours) were not grown from seed, but were instead propagated from underground stems. This means that most of the bananas in the world have the same genetic make-up.  Remember the song, “Yes, we have no bananas!”? That tune represents a time, in the 1930’s, when blight attacked the popular banana variety of that era, making them no longer available. So far, scientists and growers have been able to keep the world’s current supply free of devastating diseases, but since many of these bananas are in fact genetic copies of each other, they remain vulnerable to disease and pests. Because bananas represent an important world food source, protecting them is a big deal- thus banana biodiversity has become an important area of scientific research around the world.