Plant Enthusiasts meeting in St. Louis!

[zdufran]

I wanted to let everyone know about an exciting opportunity to meet with other plant enthusiasts, view some wonderful plant collections, research facilities, tour beautiful gardens, trade plants and cuttings with other growers and hear some talks about research and growing of tropical plants. Believe it or not - all of this will occur in one day in St. Louis, Missouri! And that day is April 24th. Anyone interested in plants is invited to attend. Bring your friends and family. The only cost is the admission charged by the Missouri Botanical Gardens. The agenda is included below.

This meeting will be hosted by Dr. Tom Croat of the Missouri Botanical Gardens. Please RSVP to me (zach at zachandchristie.com) so that we know how many chairs to set up and how many refreshments to have. And let me know if you have any questions. You can also see the official meeting announcement at our website: http://aroid.org/midamerica.

2nd MidAmerica Chapter
International Aroid Society Meeting
Missouri Botanical Garden
April 24, 2010

All plant enthusiasts are encouraged to attend - you don't have to be a member of the IAS! The only cost is admission to the Missouri Botanical Gardens. Feel free to come for the first half, second half, or the full day of activities!

Opening Gathering:
8:30-9:30 AM. Coffee

Opening:
9:30 AM A review of Systematic work with Araceae in the New World . Thomas B. Croat, Missouri Botanical Garden
10:15 AM Coffee break
10:45 AM A preview of the Philodendron from some arid areas of Brazil and a visit to the Burle Marx Collection in Brazil , Joep Moonen, Emerald Jungle Village , French Guiana .
11:15 AM Missouri Botanical Gardens Grounds Tour. This tour will concentrate on some of the grounds near the Ridgway Center since at least some of us will return there for lunch
12:15 PM Lunch break

Opening of Afternoon session:
1:00 PM An introduction to aroid genera, Thomas B. Croat, Missouri Botanical Garden
1:45 PM Cultivating tropical plants efficiently in a temperate environment, Steve Lucas, Siloam Springs , Arkansas .
2:15 PM Cultivating Aroids outdoors in a temperate area. Steve Marak, Springdale , Arkansas
2:30 PM Coffee break and plant swap and give away
3:00 PM Tour of Missouri Botanical Garden Aroid Collection
3:45 PM Tour of Research complex at Lehmann Building herbarium. This will include seeing the world's largest collection of herbarium specimens, demonstrations on the use of Lucid, a session at the CATE Araceae site at Kew and an explanation of Croat's research efforts with revisionary and floristic studies.
4:30 PM Refreshments
5:00 PM Adjournment for dinner at a local restaurant (for those who wish to attend)

[photopro]

Please note Zach purposely put "at" in his email address rather than the "@" symbol to keep SPAMMERS from auto harvesting his address. Please make that simple change when you respond!

Although some of the topics may sound "serious" you will enjoy them all! Dr. Croat is the top botanist in his field and is very effective at sharing information with those who consider themselves "non-scientific"!

One of the most interesting tours will be the chance to see the research greenhouses which contain thousands of extremely rare scientifically verified as well a wild collected plants. These greenhouses are not open to the public so this may be your only chance to see them!

This meeting is open to any plant lover! You don't need to be an IAS member to enjoy any of the talks or tours.

Please let us know if you plan to attend!

[Michael F]

Please note Zach purposely put "at" in his email address rather than the "@" symbol to keep SPAMMERS from auto harvesting his address

Don't know if I'm being paranoid, but I suspect they've got spam robots that'll auto-detect 'at' and replace it with '@' - a lot of websites now use more complex disguises or a scanned image of hand-written text (so it can't even be read by text recognition software) to give e-mail addresses. And even that won't work where the spammers employ real people (in the third world, paid a minute pittance) to harvest e-mail addresses (and to post spam on forums like here, etc.).

Hope you have a good meeting!