Our Spring 2024 meeting was on Sunday 24th March 2024.

The speaker for this meeting was Timothy Walker. He is a very well known speaker, his lectures renowned for being both informative but also highly entertaining. He was formerly the Director of Oxford Botanic Garden & Harcourt Arboretum, which under his leadership won four gold medals at the Chelsea Flower Show. Currently he is a lecturer in Plant Sciences at Oxford University. His website gives a lot more details, including some video if you want to see examples of him speaking. He gave a talk called “From Diaz to Diamonds - Plant Hunting in South Africa”, with the further description “The western Cape region of South Africa is one of the most botanically diverse areas of the World. This takes a route from the southernmost tip of Africa to the border with Namibia looking at the plants and the ethnobotany of one of the most fascinating countries in the World.” While not entirely about bulbs, his talk helped us understand the broader ecological context in which our bulbs grow in the wild.

In the afternoon, Paul Cumbleton gave part 4 of his series of short talks on “Sorting out the Massonias”.