Explore the amazing flora of Missouri as well as visit one of the top botanical gardens in the world–the Missouri Botanical Garden.  Join botanist and award-winning photographer Arieh Tal and the Society’s Education Director Greg Lowenberg to see the enormous diversity of plants and plant displays, get behind-the-scenes views, and gain an understanding about imperiled ecosystems of the region.

The 79-acre Missouri Botanical Garden (MOBOT) is a world-class center of floral beauty and scientific research.  MOBOT includes Chinese, German, English woodland, Ottoman, and Victorian gardens, one of the largest Japanese strolling gardens in North America, the world famous “Climatron” conservatory of tropical rainforest plants, 23 residential-scale demonstration gardens, native and endangered plant collections, and much more.  We’ll get an personal overview with the Garden’s Director of Horticulture, Jim Cocos, and after a behind the scenes tour the Garden’s extensive research and production greenhouses, we’ll have plenty of time for exploration of the gardens and special exhibits.  Returning to MOBOT for a second day, we’ll tour its world-class research center, where some 25 major flora projects are based.  MOBOT’s botanical research involves more than 30 nations, and information is shared using TROPICOS, the world’s most extensive botanical database.  We will visit the center’s library and its herbarium, one of the world’s largest with nearly 6 million pressed specimens.  We’ll also visit with staff of the Center for Plant Conservation, a national consortium of botanical gardens and arboreta that manage collections of the nation’s rarest plant species.  New England Wildflower Society is an active member of CPC.

Because Missouri is mid-continent–both north/south and east/west–its flora is especially diverse.  Our botanical excursions will take us to the 2,400-acre Shaw Nature Reserve west of St. Louis.  Shaw is home to tallgrass prairie, forests and glades, woodlands and wetlands.  We will tour the prairie with John Behrer, Shaw’s longtime director, and we’ll see one of the state’s best wildflower displays at the height of summer season.  The butterfly diversity in this part of the region is also enormous.  This is your chance to experience unspoiled views of Missouri as Louis and Clark might have seen.

We will also visit beautiful Onodaga Cave State Park where additional botanical exploration will reveal calcium-loving species that are rare in the Northeast, such as whorled milkweed, yellow oak, upright bindweed, and purple-stemmed cliffbrake.  As the day heats up, we’ll enjoy the highly scenic cave with its stable 56 degree temperatures and superlative geological and natural diversity, including the rare Onodaga Cave amphipod.

St. Louis boasts some of the finest cultural opportunities in the Midwest.  There will be ample time to take in evening activities, at nearby Forest Park and the adjacent Central West End neighborhood, and downtown.  The trip will end with a wrap-up dinner at the famous Bartolino’s Osteria, located on the “Hill,” the city’s Italian district.

Arrival: Sunday evening, August 3; Departure: Friday morning, August 8

Details:  Fee: $1075M/$1175NM includes 5 night’s accommodations (double occupancy), all breakfasts, two lunches, dinner on Thursday evening, all entrance fees, and van transportation during program activities.  Transportation to and from St. Louis and additional meals are not included.  Accommodations are at the newly-opened Drury Forest Park Hotel.  Single occupancy is available – add $350.  Full payment is due upon registration.  A $100 non-refundable fee applies to cancellations

Cancellation rules: Deadline of registration is July 18, 2008.  Cancellations before July 18 will be refunded minus $100.  Cancellations on July 18 or after will be refunded at 50% of total fee.