The next meeting of Brighton BCSS is on Thursday 31st March. The bad news is that I have been unable to secure an outside speaker at short notice so I am afraid you are going to have to put up with listening to me again. I am going to present my talk on columnar cacti. I know some of you will have seen this on zoom but the talk has been recently enhanced with images from David Neville and John Hughes. Our February meeting was attended by 21 members. I hope more of you will be tempted out to our March meeting.
The good news is that I have made progrsss with organising future branch meetings for this year. The meeting on Thursday 28th April will be a members evening. I will be contacting a number of local members to do15-20 minute slots with images of their own choice. The speaker on the 26th May will be Chris Eyers with a talk entitled 'Chris goes to Oaxaca' On Thursday 30th June we will have a talk by Dr John Hughes on 'Judging Chelsea'. The July meeting on the 28th will be Dave Illett and the title will be 'Pot Luck' - Dave is an excellent photographer. In Augst we hope to have a long postponed talk from Jean Forward on Echeverias. September will be an AGM and plant sale.
Future meetings should see the returrn of a number of our pre pandemic features such as sale of plants, seeds, pots, sundries and books. We have organised an open afternoon at Brenfield in Ansty for Saturday 28th May. This year we are inviting a number of Branch sellers to come along to this and have a table on our lawn to sell their plants.
It is sad that the April 11th meeting of Littlehampton branch will be their last. Most Littlehampton branch members will be reattached to Brighton branch and they will be very welcome at all our events. It is unfortunately not the only branch in south east England to have closed recently as Edenbridge, Maidstone and North Surrey have all closed within the last twelve months. We need to work hard to ensure Brighton branch remains healthy
Suzanne and I are asking for members help over the next few weeks. All of our plants have had their first watering. Due to the building project next door to us a number of old conifirs have been chopped down so we are getting much better light on the western end of our greenhouses. We need help to move some of the bigger plants like Agaves, Aloes etc out on to our outside benches where they live in the summer. We also need help subsquently reorganising plants in the big greehouse and with tasks such as getting rid of oxalis weeds, repotting bigger plants etc.
Growing Cycads under lights indoors. This winter I have gone a bit mad on Cycads. Growing them from seed I have so far acquired 48 different species. I hope to have some seedling plants for sale later this year.
Dioon spinulosum seeds germinating
Zamia stevensonii female cone. Image from my Geman seed supplier
