Breakfast in the Garden
Nov. 6th, 2008 05:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nlbarber...the Atlanta Botanical Garden, not my little backyard. The ABG has these programs periodically as a membership perk, but as most of them are scheduled on weekday mornings, I generally give them a pass. Today's topic was enough to drag me out, though: "Pitcher plants and dwarf sumac: a love story". Doesn't sound thrilling to you? Perhaps you didn't spend large chunks of your formative years wandering around a south Georgia pitcher plant bog with your parents. <g>
(My family sold the land that became the Doerun Pitcherplant Bog Natural Area to the State in 1996. My parents' primary hobby was photographing and identifying wildflowers, with a spinoff of presenting scripted slide shows of the results. And really, despite all the whining I'm sure I did as a child, it could be pretty fascinating--pitcher plants are carnivorous and there are two other genera of carnivorous plants on that same property.)
The talk this morning was given by the ABG Director of Research and Conservation, Dr. Jenny Cruse-Sanders, and focused on ABG efforts at plant and habitat conservation for rare species in Georgia. The pitcher plants she discussed are different species than the ones I know so I learned a little there, plus I enjoyed the tales of the problems of plant conservation. The dwarf sumac in the talk title, for instance, is known at only 2 locations in Georgia. The one near Covington, Ga., is all female plants, and the one miles and miles away along the Broad River is all male plants. This is a problem. <g> Efforts will be made at sumac matchmaking after some additional research is done.
On the actual breakfast front, the Garden provided coffee, juice, and carbs: bagels and cream cheese, muffins, and mini biscuits with apple butter, catered by The Flying Biscuit.
So the verdict overall: a very enjoyable event, and I resolve to make more of them. Oh, and I ran into a family friend--Mary Izard, who is of my parents' generation and knew them (and me, to a lesser degree) from many Georgia Conservancy and Georgia Botanical Society events. She asked about my father, and we had a nice chat. And I still managed to get to the office by 10, not that unusual an arrival time for me.
(My family sold the land that became the Doerun Pitcherplant Bog Natural Area to the State in 1996. My parents' primary hobby was photographing and identifying wildflowers, with a spinoff of presenting scripted slide shows of the results. And really, despite all the whining I'm sure I did as a child, it could be pretty fascinating--pitcher plants are carnivorous and there are two other genera of carnivorous plants on that same property.)
The talk this morning was given by the ABG Director of Research and Conservation, Dr. Jenny Cruse-Sanders, and focused on ABG efforts at plant and habitat conservation for rare species in Georgia. The pitcher plants she discussed are different species than the ones I know so I learned a little there, plus I enjoyed the tales of the problems of plant conservation. The dwarf sumac in the talk title, for instance, is known at only 2 locations in Georgia. The one near Covington, Ga., is all female plants, and the one miles and miles away along the Broad River is all male plants. This is a problem. <g> Efforts will be made at sumac matchmaking after some additional research is done.
On the actual breakfast front, the Garden provided coffee, juice, and carbs: bagels and cream cheese, muffins, and mini biscuits with apple butter, catered by The Flying Biscuit.
So the verdict overall: a very enjoyable event, and I resolve to make more of them. Oh, and I ran into a family friend--Mary Izard, who is of my parents' generation and knew them (and me, to a lesser degree) from many Georgia Conservancy and Georgia Botanical Society events. She asked about my father, and we had a nice chat. And I still managed to get to the office by 10, not that unusual an arrival time for me.