Conservatory of Rare Plants and Orchids, Rimba Ilmu

Rimba Ilmu, Malay for 'Forest of Knowledge', is Malaysia's first university botanic garden. It was created in 1974 on the Universiti Malaya campus in Kuala Lumpur, on the site of an abandoned rubber plantation, to serve the growing Department of Botany. Its pioneers were Professor W. R. Stanton, then head of the department, and the botanist B. C. Stone; the university's Chancellor, Queen Sultanah Bahiyah, formally opened it on 26 August 1974, and the name was chosen by Vice-Chancellor Ungku A. Aziz.

In 1997 a red-brick building arranged around a courtyard brought together offices, the herbarium, laboratories and a permanent exhibition, and the garden opened up to the public. The Conservatory of Rare Plants and Orchids followed soon after as the brainchild of the botanist Wong Khoon Meng: planting began in September 1999, and about 1,000 accessions were established by December 2000. Volunteers helped to set it up and to label its plants. Intended partly for research and partly for teaching, it extended the Rain Forests and Our Environment exhibition and the environmental education programme begun in the late 1990s.

Over the years the collection has filled out: plants first shown on bare, tidy surfaces have grown into a dense thicket reminiscent of lowland rainforest. The garden marked its fiftieth anniversary in 2024, and in September that year it was grouped with the Glami Lemi Biotechnology Research Centre under a single agroforestry unit.

The conservatory occupies one of two large plant houses behind the main Rimba Ilmu building, which opened in 1997; it is reached by a stairway lined with Baeckea frutescens. It measures 24 by 10 metres, roughly 240 m², and is served by rotary-dish coolers and a fog-misting system mounted on the roof.

The interior is divided in two. About half the floor area is a landscaped section, with a bubbling pool and a raised walkway just inside the entrance; the rest holds the systematic collections, chiefly orchids, together with a work area where new accessions are mounted or potted. Instead of pots, the plants are set in broad, shallow beds of substrate, an arrangement closer to natural conditions. Humidity is kept up by repeated misting throughout the day and by mosses planted in the house, which hold moisture. The sources consulted do not name a designer and do not describe the roofing or cladding materials.

The conservatory brings together rare and threatened plants from across Malaysia: more than 1,800 accessions in 32 families, among them Begoniaceae, Gesneriaceae, Araceae, orchids, palms and Zingiberaceae. Each display plant carries a 'UMC' accession number and a label placing it in one of three categories: EN for species endemic to particular sites, RM for species widespread outside Malaysia but rare within it, and LF for species once common in lowland forest and now reduced by habitat loss. Examples include Musa beccarii, a dwarf banana endemic to Borneo, Musa gracilis and Barringtonia corneri, both confined to the south of the peninsula, and Alocasia melo, an aroid tied to a single rock type in northern Borneo and described in 1997.

Wild orchids account for about 235 species in 72 genera, including Calanthe, Paphiopedilum, Phaius and Spathoglottis. Paphiopedilum rothschildianum has flowered here at least three times, and highland orchids such as Bulbophyllum, Crepidium and Trichotosia have adapted to the misted air. The official website gives a much lower figure: more than 40 species.

The conservatory stands behind the main Rimba Ilmu building on the Universiti Malaya campus, between Kuala Lumpur and Petaling Jaya. It is not open for casual visits: according to the garden's website, entry is only possible during Rimba Ilmu's guided walks or on its volunteer gotong-royong days, with enquiries made to the garden. Even in its first phase it did not open routinely, and short tours were offered, time permitting, after the guided walks held on the first Saturday of each month.

A visit pairs well with the permanent Rain Forests and Our Environment exhibition in the main building, designed as a self-guided display, with the garden's medicinal plant, palm and bamboo collections, or with the K. M. Wong Botanist Trail laid out by student volunteers in 2016.