Meeting Location: DBG – Dorrance Hall
Meeting Time: 2:00 p.m.

The monthly meetings will include:

  • Announcements of upcoming meetings and events
  • Club news
  • a Silent Plant Auction
  • a monthly presentation

Members frequently bring in cuttings to share on the free plant table.

We meet at 2:00 pm the last Sunday of most months at the Desert Botanical Garden, 1201 North Galvin Parkway, Phoenix, Arizona. The general meeting begins at 2 pm but you can come early to socialize and peruse the Silent Auction plants. Here is a map of the Garden.

Our Board meets monthly to discuss CACSS business; all members are welcome to attend Board meetings.

Presenter: Doug Dawson

Doug is a retired math professor and does extensive botanical travels to areas of the world where succulents grow; include Mexico, Chile, Argentina, Yemen, Socotra, Africa, and his own state of Arizona. He has organized 15 botanical exploratory trips to South Africa and Namibia, camping on local farms and public areas for three weeks and exploring the surrounding mountains and hills by day. His next trip to South Africa will be May 17, 2018.

Doug has a passionate interest for growing cacti and succulents from seed. Other interests are photography and Power Points with succulent content. He has delivered many workshops and speaking engagements in Arizona and other states. He is a retired math professor.

With a background in German and French, Afrikaans has become a much more useful language for him nowadays in rural South African and Namibian areas.

Doug’s private plant collection emphasizes seedlings, Lithops, other Mesembs, Northern Cape Crassulas, and Arizona natives. He is a member of the Cactus and Succulent Society of America and the Tucson Cactus and Succulent Society. Since 1989, Doug has been an active member of the Central Arizona Cactus and Succulent Society.

Lithops

Doug began his passion for Lithops in the 1990’s. Previous to then, he would occasionally buy one and shortly thereafter kill the poor thing. During the last 20 years he has grown most of his lithops from seed in the extremely harsh desert climate of Phoenix.

The four summer months have regular temperatures at night around 90 degree and days around 110 degrees. Doug will discuss what it takes to keep these colorful “living stones” alive.

The presentation will include many photos of what the plants look like in habitat in Namibia and South Africa. Then photos of plants in Doug’s collection will be shown, with many colorful cultivars as well as many of the species and varieties.

For those of you who are not yet open to including lithops in your collection, it is hoped that you will be convinced to give them a try.