Information of Ooty Botanical Garden’s flora to be available at your fingertips

Tourists at the the Government Botanical Garden, who scan the code, will have access to the common names, binomial nomenclature, family name, age, area of origin, Tamil name as well as the uses of the plant, tree or shrub (in both Tamil and English).

Trees in the Government Botanical Garden are being affixed with QR code, that can be used by tourists to scan and get details of the trees in the garden. | Photo Credit: M. Sathyamoorthy

Tourists visiting the Government Botanical Garden (GBG) will soon have all the information about the floral diversity of the garden at their fingertips, quite literally. By scanning the QR codes that are being attached to the shrubs and trees at the garden, visitors can get key information about the plants on their mobile phones.

Officials from the department of horticulture and plantation crops said there were over 1,000 trees and shrubs at the GBG. Currently, over a 100 of them have been affixed with the QR code, with work underway to fix them to the remaining flora in the coming weeks.

Display boards with QR codes have been tied to trees in the Government Botanical Garden at #Udhagamandalam / #Ooty in the #Nilgiris. Tourists and visitors can scan & get details of the trees in the garden.

🎥: M. Sathyamoorthy (@sathyooty) / The Hindu pic.twitter.com/pYkJZxsNE1

— The Hindu - Chennai (@THChennai) July 13, 2023

Tourists who scan the code will have access to the common names, binomial nomenclature, family name, age, area of origin, Tamil name as well as the uses of the plant, tree or shrub (in both Tamil and English).

Speaking to The Hindu, Deputy Director of Horticulture (Nilgiris), D. Balashankar, said the QR codes will be affixed to the tree using pieces of wire, and not with the use of nails, to prevent damage to the trees. He said the GBG was home to trees from all across the world, with a few well over a 100-years-old.

The flora in the garden will contain the name boards of the trees and the QR code, so that tourists who are interested in learning more about the tree can have access to the information through their mobile phones, said officials from the department of horticulture.

The Government Botanical Garden was begun in 1848 by its architect, William Graham McIvor. The 175^th anniversary of the garden was celebrated earlier this year. Officials from the horticulture department stated that it is the most popular tourist spot in the Nilgiris.