Follow the guide, and not just any guide: it will be a toucan. Its silhouette will lead you from one palm tree to another under the glass roof of the Jardin des Plantes, for five weeks coinciding with the All Saints' Day holiday. After which November takes over again.

Right in the heart of Paris, there's a place kept at 22 degrees Celsius year-round. Seven hundred and fifty square meters, a 15-meter-high rock, 600 species, and a humidity that envelops you as soon as you step inside. The tropical rainforest greenhouse at the Jardin des Plantes is a machine for escaping reality, and the Museum has made a habit of taking advantage of it every autumn. This is the fifth edition, and the theme is the palm tree.

A Tree That Isn't One

Let's start with what should already be sufficient: the palm tree is not a tree. It's a monocotyledon, a giant grass, if you will, more closely related to wheat and orchids than to oaks. No true trunk, no growth rings, no bark. What you take for a trunk is a stipe, a stack of dead leaf bases that never grows larger: a palm tree doesn't increase in circumference, it only grows taller.

The journey can be broken down into four parts: morphology, then habitats, history, and uses. The latter is dizzying as soon as you start exploring it: we get dates and coconuts from the palm tree, rattan for armchairs, raffia, wine, sugar, oil, roofing materials, palm hearts, and kilometers of rope. Few plant families have been so prominently featured.

The Toucan, and What Lies Around It

The setup is disarmingly simple: a toucan silhouette marks the remarkable palm trees, and visitors move from one to the next. No display walls, no glass cases. The texts were written by the Museum's gardeners and botanists, and it shows: you learn things you won't find in gardening magazines.

On Wednesdays, weekends, and during school holidays, short presentations are included with admission. And for those who want to spend the morning there, three botanical drawing sessions are scheduled for Saturdays, November 7, 14, and 21, at 10:30 a.m., registration required.

The building is worth the trip

You enter through an Art Deco peristyle dating from 1937, and the neighboring greenhouses were built during the reign of Louis-Philippe: they are among the first large iron and glass structures built in France to house plants, a century before the idea became commonplace. The place is as much a historical artifact as it is a heated jungle.

Five weeks, not a day more. On November 24, the toucan departs and the greenhouse becomes a greenhouse again.

Find our other favorites in our top new exhibitions in Paris.

LARGE GREENHOUSES OF THE JARDIN DES PLANTES
From October 15 to November 23, 2026
57 rue Cuvier, 75005 - Metro: Jussieu (Lines 7/10)
Open daily except Tuesdays, 10:00 AM - 6:00 PM, ticket office closes 1 hour prior
Admission: €7 - Reduced rate: €5 - Free for children under 4