Attached to the Buckhout Laboratory, you’ll find one of Penn State’s best-kept secrets. The Buckhout Greenhouse is home to a myriad of plants serving many purposes.

Penn State being a frontier research university allows for such research to take place on many different topics. At least half of the 10,000-square-foot Buckhout Greenhouse is home to plant research within the Eberly College of Science. There’s long-standing research occurring on the self-pollination of petunias by the Kao Lab, the abiotic stress response in arabidopsis and rice by the Assmann Lab, the cell walls of corn for use as biofuel by the Buanafina Lab, as well as parasitic plants by the dePamphilis and Axtell labs.

In addition to these ongoing research projects, the greenhouse is home to several dozen Amborella trichopoda plants, native to New Caledonia. These dinosaur-esque plants were a part of the Amborella Genome Project under the Ma and dePamphilis labs and are maintained and monitored for future projects.

Unlike most of the greenhouse spaces at Penn State, this one is open to the public on weekdays from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Although half of the greenhouse may be dedicated to research, the rest is dedicated to providing teaching materials for classroom use.

For instance, the entirety of the conservatory is bursting at the seams with tropical plants and features a quaint pond for aquatic plant species. If you’re nice enough, you might even see some goldfish swimming about. The walkway of the greenhouse is piled high with cacti, succulents, and euphorbia. There are also rooms specially dedicated to orchids and a substantial collection of carnivorous plants, like the Venus flytrap.

The materials provided are for classes ranging from introductory biology to art classes, so it’s necessary that a diverse group of plants is cared for to serve everyone’s needs. In combination with this, the greenhouse hopes to inspire more people across campus to gain interest in the diversity of plant life.

This has led the greenhouse staff to host “friends of the greenhouse”, or people who are just so smitten by the plants that they become fixtures that study, cultivate their own plants, or just hang out in the building. This is what makes Plant Biology Ph.D. candidate and greenhouse assistant manager Elizabeth Kelly dub the Buckhout Greenhouse the “fun” greenhouse. Anyone is free to come in and get to know the world of plants in a low-pressure, relaxing environment.

Through research and educational purposes, the greenhouse is lucky enough to feature some very fascinating and unique plants. This may range from an endangered cactus that only grows in one county in the state of Florida to a plant that is only known to wildly grow in the Namib desert in Africa.

This African plant, known as Welwitschia, is a nonflowering plant that can live for centuries to thousands of years while only ever sporting two leaves.

The greenhouse is also home to a rescue project for parasitic plants. “Parasitic” plants may sound a bit sinister, but they are actually a very important part of the native ecosystem, providing food for birds and limiting dominant invasive species.

In Pennsylvania, Castilleja has been reduced to two very small populations, both of which have a specimen being grown in the greenhouse.

Even if a plant isn’t endangered or unique from a botanical perspective, many will catch the eyes of a non-plant specialist (like me). The collection of carnivorous plants is quite a spectacle and a great way to show convergent evolution.

There are also some plants in the conservatory that are at least 100 years old.

If you’re ever looking to learn a bit more about plants and what happens in the greenhouse, or perhaps you’re just looking to laugh, be sure to check out Kelly’s TikTok, @oldcrotchface.