The Plantasia is a large public hothouse

Greenhouse

A greenhouse is a building in which plants are grown. These structures range in size from small sheds to very large buildings...

 located in the Parc Tawe

Parc Tawe

Parc Tawe is a retail park and leisure area in Swansea, Wales. It is located in the eastern area of the city centre on the west bank of the River Tawe in the Lower Swansea valley....

 retail park, Swansea

Swansea

Swansea is a coastal city and county in Wales. Swansea is in the historic county boundaries of Glamorgan. Situated on the sandy South West Wales coast, the county area includes the Gower Peninsula and the Lliw uplands...

, Wales

Wales

Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...

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Exhibits

It exhibits a wide range of tropical plants and insect

Insect

Insects are a class of living creatures within the arthropods that have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body , three pairs of jointed legs, compound eyes, and two antennae...

s. It opened in 1990.

The glasshouse

Glasshouse

Glasshouse or Glasshouses may refer to:*Greenhouse, a building where plants are cultivated*Glasshouse , a 2006 novel by Charles Stross*Glasshouse , term for a military prison in the British Army...

 contains three climate

Climate

Climate encompasses the statistics of temperature, humidity, atmospheric pressure, wind, rainfall, atmospheric particle count and other meteorological elemental measurements in a given region over long periods...

 zones: Tropical with a rainforest

Rainforest

Rainforests are forests characterized by high rainfall, with definitions based on a minimum normal annual rainfall of 1750-2000 mm...

, Arid

Arid

A region is said to be arid when it is characterized by a severe lack of available water, to the extent of hindering or even preventing the growth and development of plant and animal life...

 and a seasonal Humid Butterfly

Butterfly

A butterfly is a mainly day-flying insect of the order Lepidoptera, which includes the butterflies and moths. Like other holometabolous insects, the butterfly's life cycle consists of four parts: egg, larva, pupa and adult. Most species are diurnal. Butterflies have large, often brightly coloured...

 House. The collection includes over 5,000 plants, many of which are extinct from their natural habitat. Plant types include banana

Banana

Banana is the common name for herbaceous plants of the genus Musa and for the fruit they produce. Bananas come in a variety of sizes and colors when ripe, including yellow, purple, and red....

s, coconut

Coconut

The coconut palm, Cocos nucifera, is a member of the family Arecaceae . It is the only accepted species in the genus Cocos. The term coconut can refer to the entire coconut palm, the seed, or the fruit, which is not a botanical nut. The spelling cocoanut is an old-fashioned form of the word...

s, giant bamboo, Paw paw

Papaya

The papaya , papaw, or pawpaw is the fruit of the plant Carica papaya, the sole species in the genus Carica of the plant family Caricaceae...

 and collections of fern

Fern

A fern is any one of a group of about 12,000 species of plants belonging to the botanical group known as Pteridophyta. Unlike mosses, they have xylem and phloem . They have stems, leaves, and roots like other vascular plants...

s and cacti

Cacti

-See also:* RRDtool The underlying software upon which Cacti is built* MRTG The original Multi Router Traffic Grapher from which RRDtool was "extracted".* Munin -External links:******...

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Along with the plants, there is supporting insect life including ant

Ant

Ants are social insects of the family Formicidae and, along with the related wasps and bees, belong to the order Hymenoptera. Ants evolved from wasp-like ancestors in the mid-Cretaceous period between 110 and 130 million years ago and diversified after the rise of flowering plants. More than...

s, fish

Fish

Fish are a paraphyletic group of organisms that consist of all gill-bearing aquatic vertebrate animals that lack limbs with digits. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and cartilaginous and bony fish, as well as various extinct related groups...

 and reptile

Reptile

Reptiles are members of a class of air-breathing, ectothermic vertebrates which are characterized by laying shelled eggs , and having skin covered in scales and/or scutes. They are tetrapods, either having four limbs or being descended from four-limbed ancestors...

s. In the butterfly

Butterfly

A butterfly is a mainly day-flying insect of the order Lepidoptera, which includes the butterflies and moths. Like other holometabolous insects, the butterfly's life cycle consists of four parts: egg, larva, pupa and adult. Most species are diurnal. Butterflies have large, often brightly coloured...

 house, butterflies can be seen flying freely and viewed at various stages of development.

Filming location

Plantasia has been used as a filming location for Doctor Who

Doctor Who

Doctor Who is a British science fiction television programme produced by the BBC. The programme depicts the adventures of a time-travelling humanoid alien known as the Doctor who explores the universe in a sentient time machine called the TARDIS that flies through time and space, whose exterior...

episodes The Doctor's Daughter

The Doctor's Daughter

"The Doctor's Daughter" is the sixth episode of the fourth series of British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It was broadcast on BBC One on 10 May 2008.- Synopsis :...

and Cold Blood

Cold Blood (Doctor Who)

"Cold Blood" is the ninth episode in the fifth series of British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was broadcast on Saturday 29 May 2010...

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External links

• City and county of Swansea: Plantasia