Alaskan Aisia Expedition

[Jaime Rodriguez]

Hello Arisaemaphiles!

I just returned from the Alaska Rock Garden Society expedition to Yunnan.
We had a very successful trip,  thanks to the efforts of Guan Kaiyun of the
Kunming Botanical Garden,  and our American Team Leader Dan Hinkley from
Heronswood Nursery.  All our collections are currently in the hands of the
USDA Plant Inspectors.  We hope to get them back in short order.  As a
member of the collection team I will be getting a good share of seeds.  I'll
try to get some of the Arisaema seed to send to the AEG Exchange.  We
collected lots of A. consanguineum and A. elephas.    Several other Arisaema
collections are unidentified,  because there was just a ripe seed head and
no foliage.

The most amazing Arisaema sight was at Tianchi Lake.  There were huge
patches of ripe seed heads in the forest at one end of the lake.  The most
frustrating moment of the trip was driving past a ripe Arisaema seed head on
the road from Lijiang to Dali, near the location where the ACE expedition in
1994 found A. candidissimum.  There was no safe place to stop the vehicle.
Heavy sigh.


Jaime Rodriguez      --------------------/\-------------/\-------
P.O. Box 871394                             /   \        /\   /   \
Wasilla, Alaska, 99687                  /     \      /  \/       \
USA                                                /v^v^v\_/v^v^v^v^\
USDA Zone 3-4                           /            /                 \
(907) 357-2747                          /            /                    \
jaime at matnet.com                  /            /                       \
http://www.matnet.com/jaime/             /                          \
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