Ufa Lemonarium (Ufimsky Limonariy)

The decision to build a lemon greenhouse in Ufa was taken in 1984 on the initiative of Marsel Abdulov, forestry minister of the Bashkir Autonomous Republic, together with the State Forestry Committee of the Russian SFSR and the regional Party committee. The chosen site belonged to the so-called Park forestry district.

The method came from Uzbekistan: from 1985 it was studied at the Lenin collective farm in the Tashkent region, headed by Zainutdin Fakhritdinov, an honorary academician of the republic. In Bashkiria, engineer Farida Sadykova worked it out on 24 plants in an existing 500 m² hangar greenhouse. The lemonarium came into use in 1990, stocked with 1,500 young lemon trees from the Tashkent lemonarium.

It became the teaching and experimental farm of the Ufa Forestry Technical College. Research there has led to three lemon varieties, 'Urman', 'Salavat' and 'Leysan', and two citron varieties, 'Uraltau' and 'Zilya', being entered in Russia's state register; a study published in 2018 noted that the plantation had by then been under cultivation for more than twenty-five years. Between 2018 and 2020 a comprehensive reconstruction of the site was attempted, with its cost estimated at half a billion roubles.

The lemonarium consists of a single large glazed greenhouse of about one hectare. The trees are not grown in tubs but planted in the ground, which the farm presents as a first in Russia; the growing method had been studied in Uzbekistan. A central path runs through the house, serving planted sections that visitors do not enter.

The indoor climate is kept between 18 and 30 °C, with humidity of 70 to 80 per cent. At this latitude the glazing is the main constraint: according to a 2018 study, it lets through only half of the light usable for photosynthesis, with the shortfall most marked from November to January.

The main house is supplemented by rooting and seedling sections used for vegetative and seed propagation of fruit, forest, ornamental and vegetable plants. It succeeded a 500 m² hangar greenhouse in which the crop had first been tested.

The heart of the greenhouse is a plantation of 1,300 lemon trees of the Uzbek varieties 'Yubileyny' and 'Tashkentsky', which yield 20 to 22 tonnes of fruit a year. The farm also shows oranges, mandarins, grapefruit, pomelos, limes, kumquats, calamondins and citrons; the lemon and citron varieties entered in the state register were bred here.

The collection further includes more than 500 tropical and subtropical species, woody and herbaceous alike: figs, bay laurels, pomegranates, feijoas, medlars, bananas, pineapples, rosemary, kiwis, ficus, guavas, bromeliads, succulents, palms, ferns, papayas, olives, avocados, yuccas and dracaenas. Young lemon, pomegranate, coffee and fig plants raised in the greenhouse are in particular demand among buyers.

The lemonarium lies in Ufa's Kirovsky district, on Mendeleev Street, about one kilometre from the orangery of the South Ural Botanical Garden-Institute, so the two visits combine easily. Entry is with a guide only: the tour lasts 30 to 40 minutes and time in the greenhouse is limited to one hour, keeping to the central path.

Groups of ten or more book in advance; schools, kindergartens and young ecologists' clubs are frequent visitors. Some 30,000 people come each year, and photo shoots and wedding parties can also be received on request.