If you grow tropical plants and live in Oklahoma, southwestern Missouri, north Texas, western Arkansas, southern Kansas, western Louisiana, southeastern Colorado or anywhere people love growing tropical plants please join us at Myriad Botanical Gardens and Crystal Bridge on November 21 at 1:00 PM. Anyone and everyone is welcome to come and bring your tropical plant loving friends for a great tour of the garden! The Myriad Gardens has a fabulous collection of tropical plant species including more than 100 palm species, a collection of Cycads, Gingers, Bromeliads, Orchids and aroid species including Philodendron, Anthurium, Alocasia as well as the exotic Amorphophallus titanum. This meeting is sponsored by the members of the International Aroid Society that live the region but our goal is to meet people that love tropical plants! Although we grow and love aroids almost all of us love to grow plants from the rain forests of the world. We just want to meet people with an interest similar to our own. Technically this is the first meeting of the MidAmerica Chapter of the International Aroid Society but you don't have to join or be a member to join us for the tour of the garden. We've been told there is a good possibility that Dr. Tom Croat who is the world's leading aroid botanist as well as the P.A. Schulze Curator of Botany at the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis is hoping to be able to join us. Dr. Croat has personally collected more than 100,000 wild specimens in rain forests around the world for scientific purposes and has named many new species to science. This will be a great chance to meet Tom and ask questions. Since he is a personal friend I can assure you find him a warm and kind gentleman besides the fact he is the world's leading expert in his field! We'll be updating this post once we have a confirmation. Some of us will be bringing plants and cuttings to trade and we encourage you to do the same. Please bring anything you would like to share with other tropical plant enthusiasts since there will almost certainly be something there you'll want to bring home. For more information, check out the chapter page at http://www.aroid.org/midamerica/ Please RSVP to Zach DuFran zdufran@wdtinc.com or to Steve Lucas at Steve@ExoticRainforest.com Admission to the Myriad Center is $6 for adults, $5 for seniors and $3 children). If you've never been to the garden the Myriad Gardens website is http://www.myriadgardens.com/
This sounds like an excellent event Steve. I wish I could make it there. Steve can you remind me about the Chicago-area IAS people who had mentioned forming a chapter in our area?
I'm looking forward to attending and meeting lots of other tropical plant enthusiasts. It should be a great first meeting!
This is a bump. If you live in the area don't miss this meeting. It will be great fun. Mark it on your calendar.
We now have a confirmation that Dr. Croat will be spending the afternoon with us at the Myriad Center Garden so if anyone has questions about aroids this would be the perfect time to get an answer from the recognized world expert on this family of plants. More about Dr. Croat: http://www.mobot.org/MOBOT/Research/curators/croat.shtml You'll find Tom to be very friendly and always willing to help you find the answers you need! Since his schedule is very hectic this is a chance many aroid growers may never have again. http://www.aroid.org/midamerica/ The Myriad Center has also told us they will be providing a guide for the afternoon so you'll have a double chance to ask questions on plants in their collection. Please RSVP to Zach DuFran zach@zachandchristie.com or to Steve Lucas at Steve@ExoticRainforest.com so we can have an approximate count. We'll see you in Oklahoma City in just a few weeks! http://www.myriadgardens.com/index.html Myriad Botanical Gardens and Crystal Bridge on November 21 at 1:00 PM.
