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Dark green leaves, each 5 feet long, press against the glass ceiling. The potted banana trees have grown to their limit, and now produce fruit every 5 to 7 years.
It’s not the jungle. It’s the interior to the University of Maine Roger Clapp Greenhouse.
“We had a huge and delicious bunch of bananas a few years ago,” said UMaine Superintendent of Horticultural Facilities Brad Libby. “It was right around Christmastime so there weren’t too many people around, which is too bad because I was trying to give them away to anybody who passed by.”
The trees have been a part of the greenhouse’s permanent collection since the 1960s.
“The son of Roger Clapp remembers getting them when he was a boy. They went to Florida and hijacked them I guess,” Libby said.
The greenhouse was constructed in the 1920s and was dedicated to Clapp in 1980. He was a longtime professor of horticulture at UMaine.
The sky is overcast, but Libby wears sunglasses inside the greenhouse. He walks on a boardwalk in rubber boots, cargo pants and a blue, plaid button-up shirt.
Katherine Garland, a graduate student who has worked with Libby on research projects, refers to him as Paul Bunyan with his close-cut beard and boisterous voice.
“He’s a gem,” Garland said. “You definitely won’t forget him.”
The Roger Clapp Greenhouse is a complex of seven greenhouses with a walkway down the center to join them. Each greenhouse has different plants that thrive in varying temperatures and humidity.
Along with the banana trees, the greenhouse includes ginger plants, fig trees, coffee plants, cacti, lemon trees and vines.
When the campus is covered in snow, flowers bloom in the greenhouse. Now that the sun has melted the piles of snow on the mall, Libby will need to paint a white compound on the greenhouse glass to shield the plants from the strengthening sunrays.
“It’s very important because if you don’t put it on, it’s incredibly hot,” Libby said. “In fact, I can tell you it gets to 120 [degrees] without it because I left one house intentionally without it one year.”
Four to six student employees will help him paint the compound onto the windows later this month.
The air inside the greenhouse is heavy with moisture. Pipes snake along sweating glass walls and a cement floor. Exhaust fans whir. Steam heaters and mist machines hiss. Water drips from the ceiling.
“We have steam heat from the steam plant. The problem is: If it’s on, it’s hot,” Libby said laughing.
Libby has managed the greenhouse for 14 years. He works all week during growing season – April through October – and five days a week in the winter.
One part of greenhouse management is pest control.
“One of the big pests in the collection are the long-tailed mealybugs,” Libby said, thumbing through a plant to find a tiny, white, hairy insect nestled in the crook of a leaf.
Mealybugs prey on a wide range of plants with their piercing, sucking mouthparts.
Libby sometimes uses a low-toxicity spray to attack pests, but he prefers to use predatory insects.
The student managers have greenhouse five to themselves where they are growing chrysanthemums. Their house can only be entered from the outside door, because they’re using predatory wasps and mites to get rid of two pests – spotted spider mites and thrips.
Libby has ordered some new predators – greenlace and minute pirate bugs.
“I’m hoping to get them pretty soon. They’re predators of thrips, mites, aphids and other pests,” Libby said.
On the door of greenhouse four, there is a paper sign: “Caution, Bees in Flight Cage.” In the far left corner is a tan, mesh cage of bumblebees, a research project on pollination of low-bush blueberries.
On average, Libby says he sees 60 people enter the greenhouse to check on plants each day, and 60 more who just pass through.
Garland says greenhouses are an essential component of the horticulture curriculum. Students need to know how to grow plants, but they also need to see a variety of plants that don’t thrive in the Maine environment.
Students of many different majors use the greenhouse. Libby has seen art students pass through for inspiration.
Stephanie Burnett, assistant professor of horticulture, teaches a class on greenhouse management once a year. In the course, students are responsible for their own plants in the greenhouse – fertilizing them, scouting for pests and coming in on weekends to water them.
Burnett especially loves the scented geraniums, which are scattered throughout the greenhouse.
“They all smell a little different. One smells like green Life Savers,” Burnett said.
Greenhouse seven, at the end of the complex, is a jungle. The room is a mess of green – trees, shrubs and flowers crowd together. Near the front is an orchid garden with Spanish moss hanging overhead.
“It almost feels like you’re outside when you’re in that greenhouse,” Burnett said. It is her favorite of the seven greenhouses.
Walking back up the central walk to the front of the complex, the banana trees appear again on the right. Behind the trees is the succulent cactus garden.
“My son called it the octopus plant when he was young,” Libby said, standing before an enormous yellow and green striped plant with snaky arms.
The century plant – its common name – is native to the southwestern U.S. It sits at the back of the cactus garden, along with the prickly pear cactus and cathedral cactus. Some of the arms of the century plant have been lopped off.
“I hate to do that,” Libby said, “but there’s an exit door right there, and to be compliant with safety regulations there has to be a clear path. You would trip over that thing.”
One uncut arm has climbed up the wall and wrapped around a pipe seven feet overhead.
The century plant blooms when it reaches 20-to 30-years-old. Full grown, it’s usually 7 feet tall, and the massive white flower sprouts on a stem that reaches 10 to 15 feet.
The greenhouse has several century plants, but this one is the oldest at 15 years old, according to Burnett. It should bloom in the next decade. Libby will have to remove a pane of glass from the ceiling to allow the flower room to grow. After the flower blooms, the entire plant dies within a year.
Libby weaves back through the cacti and ducks under the leaves of the banana trees to enter the central walkway again, exiting the greenhouse, to his office just steps away.
