National Cactus Con '11

Conophytum maughanii (material from Smorenskadu, Northern Cape)

The Cactus and Succulent Society of America Convention is coming up next week in San Diego. I'll be flying out later this week to attend, and to spend a few days hanging out with plant people in Southern California. I hope to get out to the beach too, and maybe see some spring wildflowers at Anza-Borrego State Park.

I'll be giving two presentations at the Con. One will be more of a soft and squishy natural history and cultivation talk, about a generally soft and squishy genus of plants, Conophytum. The other will probably be a bit more of a hard slog, dealing with higher-level taxonomic changes in various succulent plant groups, and the new research results from evolutionary biology that have been forcing the changes. We'll see how well the talks go over with a national-level audience.