At our meeting on 28th January, the first of the New Year, our chairman, Peter Sheasby, gave a fascinating talk illustrated by his own slides on the flowers of Kazakhstan.

This large country in Central Asia, now independent, has a population of 20 million and is five times the size of France with oil and mineral resources. Peter’s slides had been taken on three separate occasions, generally in spring, which can be extremely cold with a lot of snow in the mountains. Alma Ata in the south- east corner is the business capital with a population of 11,500. The accommodation is primitive often in Mongolian style tents. Roads are sometimes just tracks, especially in the mountains, and it is frequently necessary to travel on horseback. Among the wildlife to be seen are lizards in the desert areas, some of which climb trees, swallowtail and cardinal butterflies, forest dormice, brown bears, goats, sheep and wolves. It is a mountainous country with lakes and semi-desert areas, alpine-like meadows, (which are not grazed), rivers and flowers everywhere. In the south the country has borders with Uzbekistan and Kingistan.

This was a fascinating tour, looking at flowers too numerous to list, but among these masses were tulips, alliums (of which there are about 300 species in Kazakhstan), Iceland poppies, delphiniums, hollyhocks, hypericum, wild roses and a few orchids. Much of this country may only be visited with permission, is extremely primitive, with few people and only basic accommodation. On his travels Peter saw flowers everywhere, Stone or Iron Age carvings on the rocks, an ancient track formerly used to transport caviar for the Czars, and witnessed extremes of temperature. This is an amazing country and we felt privileged to have visited it from the comfort of our chairs – and not on horseback!

The March meeting will be on Monday 31st March (5th Monday) when Duncan Coombs will be talking about the gardens in France at Bagatelle and Giverny.

All are welcome.