THE BROMELIAD SOCIETY OF GREATER CHICAGO THE BSGC NEWS January, 2002

The January 13th meeting is at 2:00 P.M. in classroom #3 at the Chicago Botanic Garden in Glencoe. Wally Fox will be presenting the program on "Bromeliads in Space". (No relation to the Muppet’s ‘Pigs in Space’ subshow.) He will show us how to get more plants in a small space. (Then we can get more plants!) This should help us develop the "microclimate" that the plants need. If you would like ideas on where to put those new plants please come.

The executive committee met at 1:00 p.m. on December 9th. We discussed the meeting schedule for 2002. The dates we have for the Botanic Garden are :

• 1/13 Classroom #3 "Bromeliads in Space"
• 2/10 Classroom #3, Guest Speaker-Virginia Beatty
• 3/ 9-17 March is the Flower Show at Navy Pier
• 4/14 Fruit & Vegatable Garden Classroom
• 5/11 Linnaeus Room
• 6/9 Fruit & Vegatable Garden Classroom
• 7/14 Classroom #3
• 8/11 Classroom #3
• 9/8 Classroom #3
• 10/13 Classroom #3
• 11/10 Classroom #3
• 12/8 Fruit & Vegetable Classroom (Snow Sled anyone??)

The Botanic Garden said that we can call a week ahead to see if the Linnaeus room is available. If we move our meeting place, we will have signs at the Botanic Garden to let you know. We hope to have two speakers lined up by March.

The treasurer’s report was submitted and accepted. There was some discussion on the amount of money we have and what to do with it. (Send me to Brazil to look for Bromeliads?) Wally Fox made a motion to donate $1,000 to the Chicago Botanic Garden. Stan seconded the motion and it passed.

Wally has started putting posters and membership sheets at nurseries. If you have a nursery that you go to, ask them if they would be willing to put up a poster and membership sheets. We need more people to help us do the work for the 2004 BSI World Conference. Any one who brings in 2 members this year will get a free BSI membership.

We discussed the advertising for the 2002 BSI program. Jack Reilly submitted a color advertising page which was for $225. We also got a free black and white page which was sent to Florida.

We came up with a deadline of April 14th for the design for the 2004 program cover and pin design. These are the same design. (Use no more than 5 colors) At the April 14th meeting we will vote on the design. The winner will receive a free registration for the 2004 conference.

The Christmas Bingo Party afterwards was enjoyed by all. Everyone won at least one plant (Average was around 3 or 4!) Wally purchased some nice plants from Jamaican Gardens for the raffle! We greatly appreciate Dana Field’s donation of plants. A few didn’t look too well after Fed Ex took an extra day to deliver but we hope everybody’s perked up after getting home and given some extra tender loving care.

This is a new year so it is time to renew your membership. We appreciate your doing this as soon as possible. The sooner everyone renews the sooner we can get a new membership roster made.

This month I am writing on our travels. We went to Phoenix and Tucson between Christmas and New Year. (Yes, that is why the newsletter is late! We don’t get paid but at least we get a vacation.) You are probably wondering where we saw bromeliads there. We went to the Tucson Botanical Gardens. It is a small botanical garden but has a wide variety of plants for its size. They have a sense of humor there. In the greenhouse there was a Cacao tree hung with chocolate candy bar wrappers. The Coffee tree was hung with coffee wrappers. In the trees we found a plastic lizard and frog. The bromeliads there were Guzmania ‘Orangeade’, Ananas comosus, Aechmea fasciata, Tillandsia sp., and Neoregelia carolinae. A Hectia texensis was found outside alongside yucca, agave and cactus. A little girl had a brush with an Opuntia Cactus here. These are the ones with the short sharp hairs(glochids) which get into your skin. They put Elmer’s Glue on her hand and dried it and then pulled off the glue and bristles. She was NOT a very happy little girl. At least we DON’T have that problem with Bromeliads!

Tucson we saw Hechtia glomerata growing outside among many varieties of succulent plants. In the art gallery was a pina or pineapple jar from Tatamban, Michuacan. This is a glazed earthenware jar which is used to store tepache. This is a regional Mexican drink made from pineapple, pulque, water and cloves.

At the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum outside of Tucson, we saw a clump of Deuterocohnia chlorantha (sic). They also have a very nice Hummingbird Aviary with several species of the birds! They have managed to breed the birds!

We would like to welcome our new member Kay Harris.

Pictures taken by Mike Goode.