The Cuban archipelago, full of tourist offers linked to beaches, culture, heritage and history, extends its options variants that involve nature.

In fact, Cuba has 11 national parks, 12 ecological reserves, 12 wildlife shelters, two protected natural landscapes and three protected areas of managed resources.

In addition, 67,000 square kilometers of insular platform, 5,700 kilometers of coasts, more than 500 beaches, a similar amount of sources of mineral-medicinal waters and 25 percent of forest areas.

Cuba holds 2 percent of the planet's flora in more than a dozen botanical gardens distributed throughout the country.

Precisely, these sites constitute an additional attraction for tourists, both nationals and foreigners, who include those places linked to nature and vegetation in their routes.

The list includes the National and the Cienfuegos botanical gardens, the Juan Tomas Roig Experimental Station, the Fundamental Agricultural Research Institute, Capaynicu.

Together with this, there are other such gardens in Pinar del Rio and Matanzas (west), Sancti Spíritus and Villa Clara (center), Holguin and Las Tunas (east), in addition to Soroa Orchid Garden and the Fern Garden in Santiago de Cuba.

In the case of the National Garden of Cuba, its exhibition areas cover some 2,300 square meters, and consist of a roofed space with three pavilions, and another exterior area in which there is a pond for aquatic plants and collections of ornamental species.

In addition, its Japanese Garden covers five hectares and is organized around an artificial lake that is 300 meters long and has 750 meters in perimeter, with an oval shape.

Meanwhile, the Cienfuegos Botanical Garden is the oldest in the country, as it was founded in 1901 with valuable collections of plants that are unique in the Americas and other regions of the planet.

Almost all its plants are unique. The orchid collection consists of more than 400 species; while there are 23 species of bamboo and 280 of palm trees.

In that extraordinary collection of palms, from tropical Africa, there is one that blooms every 25 years. It is considered one of the 10 most complete and important collections in the Americas and the world.

Of all 1,417 species in that natural enclosure, more than 500 are unique specimens, represented in more than 100 botanical families, among which are Ficus or jagüeyes, palms, bamboos and legumes.

Soroa's Orchid Garden, in western Pinar del Rio province, and the Fern Garden in eastern Santiago de Cuba, the latter has an area of 3,000 square meters, also stand out in Cuba.

The national network has received many seeds of tree species and has a herbarium that allows plants to be constantly exchanged with other parks, in order to guarantee that future generations know those plants.