JARS v36n1 - 1982 Annual Meeting

1982 Annual Meeting
Frederick Jochem, Potomac Valley Chapter

National 4-H Center
National 4-H Center
Photo courtesy National 4-H Center

The Nation's Capital and the Potomac Valley's gardens are the setting for the 1982 ARS annual meeting Thursday through Sunday, May 6-9. Headquarters will be the National 4-H Center, a few blocks outside Washington in the Bethesda, MD, countryside. The president's banquet will be held in the Blue Room of Washington's Shoreham Hotel Saturday night, May 8.
The registration fee will cover all sessions, reception and social hours, including drinks, a catered luncheon, scheduled tours, the competitive flower shows Friday and Saturday (with refrigerated storage provided to encourage long-distance entrants); plus negotiable coupons for plants to take home. Gable and Nearing rhododendrons, Gable azaleas, and native deciduous azalea seedlings are featured in this distribution.

R. Gable's Tommy #2
R. Gable's Tommy #2
Photo by Clete Pride

Potomac Valley Chapter president Bruno Kaelin's welcoming address and John Shaffer's illustrated "Rhododendron and Azalea Gardens of the Capital" lead off the Thursday evening session. Then Dr. August E. Kehr, ARS past president and gold medalist, highlights the horticultural heritage of the U.S. Agricultural Research Center at Beltsville, MD, where he was long a staff geneticist.
Mr. Hideo Suzuki, Vice President of the Japanese Rhododendron Society, is also on the Thursday night program and will speak on the subject, "Rhododendron Species and Hybrids of Japan." Mr. Suzuki is an industrialist who finds time to go plant hunting and to arrange for others such as Warren Berg, Dave Goheen and Frank Doleshy to accompany him or go on expeditions of their own. He has found many special forms of rhododendrons, especially dwarf forms, and very generously made them available to this country. A frequent contributor to the Journal, Mr. Suzuki has vastly increased our knowledge of rhododendrons outstanding for both their ornamental value and usefulness in hybridizing.
Friday morning Dr. R. M. Withers of the Australian Rhododendron Society opens the program with the latest information on the Vireyas, emphasizing species in cultivation in various parts of the world. Mr. Weldon Delp, of Harrisville, in Western Pennsylvania, will show us results of 35 years of breeding rhododendrons for cold hardiness in his 90-day growing season.
Featured Friday afternoon is an extensive tour of the National Arboretum introduced by its new director, Dr. Marc Cathey. Noted horticulturist and speaker, former chief of florist and nursery crop laboratories at Beltsville, he was recently Kiplinger Professor of Horticulture at Ohio State University. Dr. Cathey is also the 1981 recipient of the Liberty Hyde Bailey Medal, the most prestigious honor given in American horticulture.

Azaleas at National Arboretum
Azaleas at National Arboretum

Friday evening the contributions of Joseph B. Gable to the genus Rhododendron will be illustrated in an outstanding series of color photographs made in Gable's garden near Stewartstown, Pa., by Dr. Clete Pride of the National Geographic Society. Gable's rhododendron legacy then will be discussed by Mrs. Russell Haag. She and her husband, both ARS silver medalists, were longtime friends of Gable and members of the Gable Study Group. Clifford Desch, Associate Professor of Biology at the University of Connecticut and past president of Connecticut Chapter ARS will present "Following Hooker to Sikkim."
After the Saturday morning bus tours to outstanding local gardens we will gather at Margaret White's for a picnic lunch and enjoy the mature plantings of Mrs. White's spacious gardens.

R. 'Atroflo'
R. 'Atroflo'
Photo by Clete Pride

Breeding strategies for producing the rhododendrons of the future is the theme for the open discussion Saturday afternoon under the chairmanship of Dave Wagner, past president of the Potomac Valley Chapter. Topics include "Contemporary Genetics and Rhododendron Applications," by Dr. A. K. Stoner, USDA; "Rhododendron Species," by Ken Gambrill of the Rhododendron Species Foundation; "Reinventing the Wheel and Other Breeding Strategies," by Dr. Henry Schroeder; plus contributions from Dr. D. L. Hinerman, Porter Orr, Weldon Delp, John Boeggman, and Carl Deul. All members are urged to participate.
Optional sightseeing tours of Washington and environs also will be available Saturday afternoon. The main event Saturday night at the Shoreham banquet will be the presidential address and the traditional prizes and awards. Music and other features are planned to round out the evening.
The optional Sunday tour to Joseph B. Gable's farm near Stewartstown, Pa., presents a unique opportunity to see "the flowering forest of Joe Gable" as a national magazine called it. Members of the Gable family and ARS friends will serve as guides. Around the house and farm buildings are the originals of a number of Gable varieties, some of them more than 50 years old. In the woods, a quarter mile downhill, are several acres planted by him, mainly with seedlings from his crosses.

R. Gable's yellow brachycarpum
R. Gable's yellow brachycarpum
Photo by Clete Pride

R. Gable's Pink Perfection
R. Gable's Pink Perfection
Photo by Ray Goodrich