A garden for research and conservation

Lae Botanic Garden is a botanical garden in Lae, Papua New Guinea. Established in 1949, it supports botanical research, plant conservation and education. Its institutional account includes Hoya among its plant collections and describes nurseries used to propagate and establish plants.

The garden is connected with the Papua New Guinea Forest Research Institute. The institute’s account describes the garden and the scientific collections housed at the site. The living garden, research institute and National Herbarium have related but distinct roles.

A connection to Hoya fieldwork

In their 2022 Papuasia study, Michele Rodda and Nadhanielle Simonsson report that remaining living plants from her Papua New Guinea research collections were relocated to Lae Botanic Garden and Singapore Botanic Gardens in 2017. Growing plants collected without flowers allowed later study of their flowering material.

That published history explains the garden’s place in the research. It does not provide a current accession inventory or establish that a particular transferred plant is still alive or available for study.

Living plants and preserved specimens

A living accession and a preserved herbarium specimen can document different stages of a collection. The PNGplants project provides a separate route to herbarium records associated with LAE. A reference to that herbarium code should not be treated as a living-garden accession.

Research and sources

• Lae Botanic Gardens: About Us and Forest Research Institute, checked 28 October 2026.
• Rodda and Simonsson (2022), Hoya of Papuasia, Part II, pages 139–140: fieldwork, living collections and the reported transfer.
• PNGplants project details: herbarium-record discovery.