The climate on Madeira is also very good for the growing of orchids. You can find some in the wild and you can see them in public and private gardens. Orchids are also exported to many other places in the world. It is possible to visit private production facilities for orchids and you find them in all shapes and colours.

The climate is also very good for tourists and big cruise ships are coming to Funchal almost every day.

In addition to all the flowers you find out in the nature you also have some nice private and public gardens on the island. For me “The Palheiro Gardens” - a little east of Funchal - is an important garden where I have been visiting almost every year for 11 years.

There is also a nice Botanical Garden in Funchal. In the different gardens you can find huge amounts of additional plants and flowers which you normally can’t see for free.

Clematis is hardly used on Madeira. I have only seen 6 or 7 plants all together during these years. It may be because of the climate, but more I believe it is because they are not at all well known on the island. The most interesting one is an old clematis grandiflora found in “The Palheiro Gardens”. On our clematis pages here at Gardenbuddies we have had some discussions about this one. I visit it every year

although it never flowers during the time I am there, but on this picture you can see how far the buds had developed as I was there last December (2003). The picture with the sign on it is a couple of years old. Today it has no sign on it (but the last name I saw was clematis grandiflora). In the above mentioned thread Roger Van Loon showed pictures of the big yellow flowers. He had been visiting the garden once when it was flowering.

In addition to walking along the levadas you can also do some nice walking in different mountainous areas like in the east around the area of Sao Laurencio. This can be very interesting and bring about possibilities to see even more very seldom seen plants and other nice combinations inside wild mountains.