VIII International Aroid Conference

From: Don Burns <burns at mobot.org> on 1997.12.15 at 18:56:07(1757) Aroiders, The list processor is in a very bad mood today and has resisted all attempts to post a note from Tom Croat. It finally has spit out a pretty messy version of Tom's note, but I thought it appropriate to resend it with this introductory explanation and all the listproc garbage removed. Apologies to Tom for the botched message. His note is below. Don Burns Plantation, FL USA Zone 10b +More ----------- Thomas B. Croat, Ph.D. P.A. Schulz Curator of Botany Missouri Botanical Garden P.O. Box 299 St. Louis, MO 63166-0299 phone: 314-577-5163; fax 314-577-9596; email croat@mobot.or VIII INTERNATIONAL AROID CONFERENCE St. Louis, Missouri August 8-11, 1999 Plans are being made for an international conference dealing exclusively with aroids. This conference will follow immediately after the 1999 International Botanical Congress which is also being held in St. Louis. The XVI International Botanical Congress will be the first held in North America since 1969 and it is expected to draw record numbers of participants. Since the time constraints of the IBC are such that it is not possible to hold a symposium on a single family lasting more than one half day it was deemed best to use this IBC opportunity by holding a longer meeting for an aroid conference. It will be the first time that significant numbers of Latin Americans are expected to attend these international meetings. This is especially exciting since there are increasingly larger numbers of aroid enthusiasts and researchers in Latin America. Although I already have a tentative schedule for what I would hope to be the ultimate schedule, it is premature to circulate this now since many of the prospective speakers have not yet responded. What is planned are three days of meetings filled with interesting topics. The tentative schedule includes a discussion of Araceae in large and small floristic regions, revisionary works of a variety of genera, glimpses at the best public and private collections of Araceae, horticultural research programs, horticultural and systematic techniques and procedures, the registration of hybrid plants, and many other miscellaneous topics. In all over 50 presentations will be made during the three day conference and an additional general lecture will be held each of three evenings. An unlimited number of poster sessions will also be made available for those who are unable to be fit into the schedule or who prefer to have their presentations on display all during the conference. In addition I am hopeful that we will have opportunities for video displays and computer terminals available for those of you who wish to display your own web pages or some special program. Early in 1998 I will be sending out more information in the First Circular about these meetings but I am attempting at this time to get together a mailing list of persons who think they would like to attend and want their names on the mailing list for the First Circular. Your name and address on this list does not commit you to attend but I would like to begin planning and would like some tentative numbers. We had around 60 in attendance in China and a similar number in Moscow but I am really expecting that this will be a more well attended meeting because St. Louis is centrally located in the United States and much less expensive to visit. There is also a potentially much larger audience of aroid enthusiasts in this country owing to our large extensions into the subtropics. In addition, St. Louis has a lot of unique interesting attractions besides the Missouri Botanical Garden, the oldest of its kind in the United States. In addition to the Climatron the aroid research collections numbering over 4000, the library and the dried herbarium collections will be made available to participants. We also expect to have available many aroids for visitors, many of them distributed gratis to participants of the conference. For many of you on Aroid-l I have only an e-mail address or sometimes only a first name so if you do respond be specific and give me a regular mailing address. While 1999 may seem like a long time off in the future you will be surprised how time flies. We are looking forward to hearing back from you. Thomas B. Croat P.A. Schulze Curator of Botany Missouri Botanical Garden Box 299, St. Louis, Missouri, U.S.A. 63166 Peter Boyce Royal Botanic Garden Kew, Richmond, Surrey TW9 3AB England Dewey Fisk President International Aroid Society

From: "Dr. Tom Croat" tcroat at LEHMANN.MOBOT.ORG> on 1999.08.23 at 01:40:36(3592) Dear Aroiders: I want to thank all of you who attended the VIII International Aroid Conference recently in St. Louis both for your willingness to come from such long distances but also for your excellent participation in the discussions, poster viewings, etc. This was clearly the most successful Aroid Conference ever held with the vast majority of the world's Aroiders in attendance. I was very pleased with the large attendance and I hope that all of you found it a profitable experience. I only regret that I was not able to spend more time with each of you. It was a profound experience for me with barely a 30 second interval free to think. I found myself getting up in the middle of the night to work on my presentations because I also had a house full of guests which took up most of my normal waking hours. I know that many of you took pictures during the conference and I am hopeful that you might be willing share your pictures with me. I normally take a lot of slides to document these conferences and have simply because of my longevity and because I like to take picures become an unofficial arquivist for the IAS and for the conferences. So it was especially painful for me to be unable to spend more time taking pictures during my own conference. I will gladly pay for copying and mailing of any pictures that you would be willing to forward to me and I thank you very kindly for any halp that you can lend. Tom

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