16th Eastern Cactus Conference - First Day

The Cactus Con is going swimmingly, so far. Yesterday was mostly taken up by settling in and dinner at a fair-to-middling Chinese restaurant called Hong Kong ("Hong & Kong" on the menu), but there were some presentations, too. Chris Allen and Glen Lord gave a demonstration on succulent bonsai, with Chris describing cultivation techniques (from the point of view of a Conophytum grower, he waters and fertilizes the bejeezus out of his caudiciforms, at least in summer, though you can't argue with his results). Meanwhile, Glen, a grower at Bonsai West, talked about how to shear the resulting masses of vegetation.

Then, Fred Kattermann of New Jersey talked about Copiapoa, a genus of globular cacti from the extreme deserts on the coast of Chile. Fred had some really amazing photographs of the little guys clinging to rocks, sinking into clay and leaning out of the sun in habitat. Finally, Matt Mattus of the CSSM gave a charming presentation on a typical yearly cycle of growing Oxalis, Nerine, Clivia and other South African geophytes in his greenhouse.

Here are some photos from the show setup, which I should get back to...

Glen Lord, Steve Hammer, Ernst van Jaarsveld and Abby Rorer discuss plants for the show.

Show setup in progress. Judging theoretically starts in one hour.

Good stuff for sale at the CSSM table, courtesy of the Sphaeroid Institute.

The sale area.

Some of the plants assembled for the auction tonight.