Need a ray of sunshine? How about gazing upon some fresh boughs laden with fragrant oranges and fat yellow grapefruit? Or, look! Up in a tree! Hunky papaya with skin so smooth and sensuous and ~ almost ripe!

These are a few fruits from around the world in the greenhouses at Marsh Botanic Garden at Yale University in New Haven. That’s not all. Big tubs of bright golden sunflowers and fiery tithonia and other annuals, perennials, shrubs and trees await the visitor. Here, the familiar share space with the exotic, veggies with flowers and herbs, and the studied with the simply ornamental.

Four greenhouses bursting with plants – each a captivating specimen no matter the size – share eight acres with Marsh Hall, Yale’s original home of Forestry, and a hillside garden that continues to evolve from Beatrix Farrand’s 1920s design to today’s by manager Eric Larson. Plan to spend a few hours and bring your camera.

In the greenhouses, plant labels tell common names, scientific names and native lands, adding to the wonder of many unusual plants. Here, the widest variety of planters and pots ever seen in use in one place inspires the gardener to create. For instance, moss-lined wire baskets that look like filigree tops hold bromeliads. White petunias with deep purple throats in white plastic looks fantastic.

Robust plant specimens encourage capability. “Why can’t I grow a fabulous mistletoe Ficus like this one in terra cotta?” says the visitor, “or a simple tray of moss or a planter of bright red and green Venus Fly Trap?”

In Greenhouse #3, a steamy water garden with water lettuce and water hyacinth morphs down the bench into bog gardens populated by carnivorous plants. On this day, an unsuspecting fly walks deliberately up and down tubular leaves of Sarracenia.

A Wollemia pine, discovered by David Noble in 1994 in Australia, looks like a cross between Podocarpus and a monkey puzzle tree. Nearby, a fragrant yellow gardenia blossoms. But look out for the Common Gorse, a small shrub from Western Europe, whose leaves are modified spines.

In House #2, a colorful mix on one bench includes abutilon, buddleia, polygonum, bouvardia, goldenrod, Mexican honeysuckle, datura, roses, rue, epazote! And my goodness, Ailanthus altissima – the scourge. In this house, flowers abound – too many to mention.

Entering House #3, delightful lithops and other succulents populate a bench. Through the doorway into a steaming jungle, Grevillea – an old heart throb – almost reaches the roof. Tall lotus in a tub is underplanted with water lettuce. A pink corner has variegated shrimp plant, several varieties of polka dot plant and pink and salmon hibiscus.

And finally, a house for desert plants – intensely crowded but happy.

“Our mission is to provide support for research, instruction, and outreach,” says Eric Larson, manager.

Three houses are used for instruction although few classes that study plants remain at Yale. Life Science touches on plant diversity and ecology for two weeks, so students come to the greenhouses to look at ferns, pine, moss and clubworts the first week and flowering plants the second.

“We provide lab space, microscopes, study tables, food crops; we have as many different plant taxa as possible, and not all tropical,” says Larson says. Staff forces cold hardy plants in cold frames to flower or fruit for research, like the corn, rice, and tobacco in one greenhouse and South African grass in another. Tobacco is a quick generational plant to study for the tobacco mosaic virus. In the corn house, small corn is used in a butterfly genetics study.

A new greenhouse is under way for more lab space, social events, research and their intriguing desert plant collection.

Marsh Botanic Gardens