If any of you are interested, Mauro Peixoto who runs the brazilplants.com website of photos and sells seeds of all kinds of native Brazilian plants including a lot of geophytes, has been sponsored by some gesneriad people to come speak in Northern California on July 4 and in Southern California on July 10. His talks will of course be gesneriad-oriented (although there are a number of gesneriads that form tubers), he told me he will be more than happy to meet bulb people and talk about bulbs, both Brazilian and otherwise, at either event. (He told me to warn you that there will only be 2 Amaryllids in each presentation, Worsleya and one Hippeastrum!) He is also planning on visiting the Huntington Gardens on one of his days down south. He's hoping it's either July 8 or 9. We will try to organize a get-together for that as well. Details for the two presentation are as follows: July 4, 10:30-11:30 am at the Gesneriad Convention at the Marriott Oakland City Center, 1001 Broadway, Oakland CA 94607 July 10, 7:30-9:00 pm at the South Bay Begonia Society meeting at Dana Middle School Auditorium, 5504 W. 135th St., Hawthorne, CA (Donation $5.00) I got to visit Mauro several times while working on a project in Brazil a couple of years ago, and he is (as many plant people are) one of the coolest people. He took me on some quick hikes to various areas near his home and down at the coast to look at various cool native plants (including various Alstroemeria species and we even found a Hippeastrum reticulatum var striatifolium in a coastal forest not more than 500 yards from the Atlantic Ocean), and a longer trip to Harri Lorenzi's absolutely beautiful botanical garden Jardim Botânico Plantarum where I got to see some Griffinia unlike any that I've seen or seen photos of elsewhere. And his shadehouses are packed full of the most amazing collection of geophytes and plants from all over Brazil. (In particular, Hippeastrums, Griffinias, Worsleyas, and Neomaricas.) Neat guy. --Lee Poulsen Pasadena, California, USA - USDA Zone 10a Latitude 34°N, Altitude 1150 ft/350 m