This is an open invitation to attend the International Aroid Society Show and Sale, Miami, FL. September 18 and 19.

The annual IAS show and sale will be held at Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden in Miami, FL and you are urged to attend! The IAS Show and Sale is a weekend event held annually during the 3rd weekend in September at the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden in Miami, Florida, USA.

This the board has arranged an afternoon of speakers with most of their topics aimed at growers. Well known aroid grower and enthusiast LariAnn Garner will speak for about one hour with a computerized presentation of both the pollination and hybridization of aroid species. LariAnn is well known in the general plant community as a result of her website http://aroidiaresearch.org/

She is a frequent a clear voice on many of the most frequently read plant discussion forms and will be available for a question and answer session after her presentation.

Horticulturist Scott Wade from Big Pine Key, FL who also posts regularly on a variety of forums including this one will be speaking to the Saturday afternoon group trying to help everyone understand some of the "technical" terms you sometimes read. Scott has a large personal collection of aroids and is a recognized expert in his field.

Dr. Tom Croat of the Missouri Botancial Garden will be giving two presentations on Saturday afternoon but each is planned to be atimed at growers. The one many of us are most interested in having explained is how to use the Royal Botanic Garden Kew (London) website LUCID which allows any grower with a basic amount of information to come to a fair conclusion as to what many Philodendron and Anthurium species may actually be named in science. Bring a laptop!

At the Saturday night dinner (cost $25.00) Dr. Scott Mori will be speaking at the banquet this year. His talk is entitled: "Aroids and Neotropical Forests: Is There Hope for Their Future?"

Dr. Mori was born in Janesville, Wisconsin in 1941. He attended the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point where he obtained his B.S. degree in 1964 in Biology and Conservation, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison where he was awarded his Ph.D. in botany in 1974. He taught botany and zoology at the University of Wisconsin-Marshfield from 1969 to 1974 and has been the curator of the Summit Herbarium in Panama (1974-1975) and of the herbarium of the Cocoa Research Center in Bahia, Brazil (1978-1980). He was Director of the Institute of Systematic Botany at The New York Botanical Garden from 1995-2001 and is currently the Nathaniel Lord Britton Curator of Botany at the same institution. He and his collaborators have published an illustrated Guide to the Vascular Plants of Central French Guiana for which they were awarded the Engler Medal in Silver for 2002 by the International Association of Plant Taxonomists. Dr. Mori was recently awarded the David Fairchild Medal for Plant Exploration and the Asa Gray award by the American Society of Plant Taxonomists for life-time achievement for his studies of the classification and ecology of New World tropical plants.

In addition, there will be lots of aroids and other plants available for purchase during the show as well as our annual auction of rare and interesting species.

For more information visit www.Aroid.org

You don't need to be an IAS member to join us!

Here is a link that might be useful: The International Aroid Society