OUR COMMUNITY OF PALM PEOPLE
The Personalities of the Palm World
44 topics in this forum
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PalmTalk Username: SubTropicRay (formerly Ray Tampa) Ray Hernandez is a native Floridian, born and raised in Tampa, Florida. In 1993, he received a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from the University of South Florida. Today, he is a Senior Project Engineer for an Aerospace company that develops and builds rocket, missile and satellite components. While his work is drastically different from his hobby, he has taken advantage of business trips to South America, Australia and Asia to see various palm species in their native habitat. Ray first took an avid interest in palms upon seeing Thomas Edison’s Royal Palms in Ft. Myers, Florida. 25 years later, he…
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Susan, originally from Connecticut, earned a BA in interior design from Pratt Institute. She came to Puerto Rico over 30 years ago as an international staff member with Citibank where she managed the branch bank and major building design and construction department. Later she moved into the bank’s financial area specializing as a trader of tax exempt CDs and marketing of banking products and account officer to local and international corporate clients. Her last position before retirement was as branch manager of the Spanish bank, Banco Central Hispano on the island of Culebra, Puerto Rico. She and her husband, Pedro Rodriguez, have a collection of over 50 palm species at …
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PalmTalk Username: Noblick Larry Noblick was born in Ohio and has a B.S. in Biological Conservation (Wildlife Management), a B.S. in Education, and an M.S. in Botany from Ohio State University. He first became interested in palms while serving as a Peace Corps volunteer in Brazil (1978-80). He founded an herbarium at the Universidade Estadual de Feira de Santana (HUEFS) in Bahia, Brazil, and later returned and spent four more years developing it and continuing his studies on the palms of the Atlantic Forest Region. He came back to the U.S. in 1986 and obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 1991. He then went on to complete a post-doc at Fairchil…
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MERRITT, Michael - Director
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PalmTalk Username: Mike in Kurtistown Mike Merritt is the son of a career Air Force officer and spent a childhood moving around a lot. A major early interest was growing plants, and his non-plant family watched in tolerant bewilderment as he planted rows of flowers in various backyards. His adult work was not related to plants, however, and culminated with a 25-year career with the U. S. Geological Survey as a Research Hydrologist working at various locations in Florida. While in Miami in 1980, a USGS colleague encouraged Mike to join the International Palm Society, and he began buying plants at the palm sales at Fairchild Tropical Garden. After relocating to central F…
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BEZONA, Norman - Director
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PalmTalk Username: bezona Norman Bezona is a University of Hawaii Agricultural Extension agent with responsibilities in ornamental horticulture, forestry, and environmental studies. He has been an IPS member since 1961 and was active with the Society in Florida where he worked and completed his master's degree. Norman lives on the "Volcano Island" of Hawaii on 40 acres of montane cloud forest where he has planted thousands of palms. The area is becoming a center for teaching an appreciation of tropical montane forests. Local students and residents, as well as visiting plant lovers, tour the forest gardens to learn about native and exotic plant species.
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The chocolate, cocoa beans and coconut business has taken Paco to the Middle East and Asia for many years, introducing him to palms and their multiple uses. But his passion for all palms started when Paco became a member of the Spanish group Amigos de las Palmeras, and through them, the IPS. Since 2009, Paco is Secretary of the Spanish society ABEPYC. Travelling to the 2010 Rio Biennial, the 2011 mid-term IPS Board meeting in Tenerife, and organizing a Valencia post-tour for some of the IPS Board members after Tenerife provided Paco with the opportunity to meet other palm lovers. A group from ABEPYC went to visit Venezuela and the AVEPALMAS Venezuela Palm Society early in…
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ROCA, Fernando - Director
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PalmTalk Username: Ceroxylon Born in Lima, Perú (1955), Fernando Roca holds a doctorate in Social Anthropology (2004) from the EHESS (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales) Paris, France and a Master in Theology (1994) from Centre Sèvres also in Paris, France. He is an ethnobotanist and Catholic priest and a member of the Society of Jesus, a religious order. He found the first population of Parajubaea cocoides in the north of Peru in 2009 Palms (Vol 54 (3) 2010, pp.133-136). After spending 15 years living in the northwest Amazonian rainforest of Peru, Fernando now lives in Lima and teaches at the University. He has been a member of the IPS since 2004. He conti…
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PalmTalk Username: DoomsDave David Paul Bleistein’s dream of growing palms outdoors came true when he moved to southern California in March of 1985. Dave joined the IPS and Palm Society of Southern California (PSSC) in 1993 and has been a member of both ever since. He has been a director of the PSSC since 2009, and was elected President in early 2012. Dave moved many times during his first years in California and planted palms in the ground at most of the places he lived, which included San Bernardino, Riverside, Long Beach, Monterey Park, Sunland, and Los Angeles; many still grow today. In October 2002, Dave bought his half-acre in La Habra, California and transformed i…
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DEMOTT, John - Director
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PalmTalk Username: Redland John, a South Florida resident involved with commercial ornamental horticulture for almost 40 years, is the owner and operator of Redland Nursery, Inc. He has introduced many “new” palms to the industry. John has worked closely with Montgomery Botanical Center and the Florida Nurseryman and Grower’s Association in the development of a seed bank. John has been married to Carolyn for almost 38 years. They have two children: Jeffrey 28 and Jenifer 27. John was a fireman for 28 years, and holds a commercial pilot’s license. His latest passion has been the forming of the “Florida Keys Botanical Center”, a 501c3 corporation, which is being developed …
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HARESH, R. - Director
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PalmTalk Username: Haresh Haresh lives in Madurai, in the state of Tamil Nadu, India, and has been studying and growing palms for over 30 years. Palms are the integral part of his plant hobby that also includes tropical flowering trees, succulents and orchids. As a business executive, his work provides extensive travel opportunities to visit gardens and growers in the US, Europe and in many parts of Asia. He brings his business management and international exposure to the society. Haresh is currently involved in developing two gardens near Madurai. He hopes to take more time off in the coming years to visit threatened habitats and to study the palm populations in his par…
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PalmTalk Username: tom jackson Tom has been an International Palm Society member for more than 20 years and has attended almost all biennials in that time. A native of Wisconsin, his first exposure to palms was in the conservatories of the Midwest. Visits to family and botanic gardens in Southern California got him hooked on palms. While in Medical school, an externship in a small hospital on the Mosquito Coast of Nicaragua was his first exposure to the tropics. Tom moved to San Francisco to continue his education in a more palm friendly climate. While pursuing a career in hospital based pathology and blood banking, Tom and his wife, Kathleen Grant (an MD oncologist), pu…
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MORGAN, Kathryn - Director
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PalmTalk Username: Kathryn Kathryn Morgan is a native resident of New Orleans, Louisiana. She received a BS in Chemical Engineering from Louisiana Tech University and is a process engineer at a refinery just outside of New Orleans. Kathryn got her love of plants from her mother and bought her first palm, a Phoenix roebelenii, in 1997. At that time, there were only a few common species of palms readily available in the New Orleans area, so Kathryn began germinating seeds of the more unusual palms that caught her attention. She has been a member of the IPS since 2001 and served as President for the Louisiana Palm and Cycad Society for over ten years.
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SAYERS, Jack - Director
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PalmTalk Username: elHoagie Jack is an Astronomer at California Institute of Technology. He moved from Denver to Los Angeles in 2002. Lindsey (his wife) and Jack now have a few hundred palms growing in their garden and several hundred more coming along in containers. He has been interested in plants since childhood and even convinced Lindsey to choose their home based partially on the palm-friendly microclimate! They joined both the International Palm Society and the Palm Society of Southern California (PSSC) in 2004. In 2006, Jack became a board member for the PSSC, on which he has served continuously since that time (and on which he continues to serve.) For PSSC, Jack …
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STEPHENSON, Grant - Director
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PalmTalk Username: palm a grant it At age 3, Grant Stephenson began helping his grandmother tend her garden. Little did she know, she ignited in Grant a passion for plants that would one day lead him to a life in horticulture. Grant worked for several nurseries at the start of his career, but it wasn't until the early 1980's that he met Joe Montgomery, an IPS member from Austin, TX who introduced him to the world of palms--especially cold hardy species. Joe became a close friend and mentor, and he encouraged Grant to pursue his growing passion for palms and other cold-hardy yet tropical-looking plants. In the mid 1980's Grant joined the IPS and in 1993, with a vision…
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United States economic botanist, agricultural explorer, and professional photographer. Walter Henricks Hodge was born in 1912 and raised in Worcester, Massachusetts, where he graduated in biology from Clark University in 1934. He went on to study at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, for his master's degree and afterwards, until 1942, was an instructor at the college, except for leave granted to pursue dissertation research on the flora of Dominica for his PhD from Harvard University (1937-1940), which he completed under the tutelage of M.L. Fernald. During the Second World War, he was a botanist for the Cinchona Mission in Peru for the United States State Depart…
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FAIRCHILD, David G.
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David Grandison Fairchild (April 7, 1869 - August 6, 1954) was an American botanist and plant explorer. Fairchild was responsible for the introduction of more than 200,000 exotic plants[1] and varieties of established crops into the United States, including soybeans,[2]pistachios,[3]mangos, nectarines, dates, bamboos, and flowering cherries. Certain varieties of wheat,[4] cotton, and rice became especially economically important. Background Fairchild was born in Lansing, Michigan, and was raised in Manhattan, Kansas. He was a member of the Fairchild family, descendants of Thomas Fairchild of Stratford, Connecticut. He graduated from Kansas State College of Agricultu…
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MONTGOMERY, Robert H.
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Robert Hiester Montgomery From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Born Sep. 21, 1872 in Mahanoy City, Pennsylvania, USA Died May 2, 1953 in Coral Gables, Florida, USA Robert Hiester Montgomery was an influential accountant and educator. He was one of the founders of what is today the world's largest accounting firm, PricewaterhouseCoopers and a two-term president of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA). Montgomery was the author of numerous books on auditing and taxation including Auditing Theory and Practice, a bestseller originally published in 1912 which is still in print. He was successful in three professions despite his lack of f…
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(From the Memorial Sub-forum on PalmTalk) Paul Andrew Drummond (April 15, 1924 – September 15, 2007) Born to a physician father and a loving, stay at home mother, Paul was raised in New York City during an age of the city’s “reinvention” from crime, poverty, and the desperation of crowded immigrants to the welcoming diversity of people, religion, cultures, and the arts. As a youngster, adventuresome Paul thrived on the continual thrill the big city atmosphere offered including riding the subways and exploring Central Park….all alone and by eight years of age. After his physician father met a premature accidental death, his independent mother was determined to af…
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