Join us Saturday, February 19th at 10:00 a.m. PST for the next in our series of webinars featuring Cactus and Succulent experts from around the world.
Program Description
Tree Euphorbias as a group are poorly understood and rarely photographed. If one uses an arbitrary definition of a single-stemmed species with a height of 10 feet or more as a “tree,” then there are 107 species, give or take, that fall into this category. A few are New World, but the majority occur in Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, and the Indian subcontinent. Because Arid Lands Greenhouses has been in operation for 50 years and once specialized in Euphorbia, we have perhaps 50 or more tree Euphorbia in cultivation, and the speaker’s travels in Africa and Arabia have captured images of more species, some of which have never been photographed before to our knowledge. This talk is a geographical and taxonomic tour of the region depicting many species of tree Euphorbias in habitat and cultivation.
Dr. Robert H. Webb has worked on long-term changes in natural ecosystems of the southwestern United States since 1976 and African ecology since 2003. He has degrees in engineering (B.S., University of Redlands, 1978), environmental earth sciences (M.S., Stanford University, 1980), and geosciences (Ph.D., University of Arizona, 1985). Since 1985, he has been a research hydrologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Tucson (retired in 2013) and is affiliated with the Desert Laboratory of the University of Arizona. Webb does interdisciplinary work to attempt to understand long-term change in the arid and semiarid regions of the United States, Mexico, and Africa. Webb has authored or edited 15 books and about 250 publications and given around 400 presentations in his 45-year career.
Short Bio
Dr. Robert H. Webb has worked on long-term changes in natural ecosystems of the southwestern United States and Baja California since 1976. He has degrees in engineering (B.S., University of Redlands, 1978), environmental earth sciences (M.S., Stanford University, 1980), and geosciences (Ph.D, University of Arizona, 1985). Since 1985, he has been a research hydrologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Tucson and an adjunct faculty member of the School of Natural Resources and the Department of Hydrology and Water Resources at the University of Arizona. In addition to his research on long-term change in desert regions, he has collected succulent plants and cacti for 40 years. Webb has authored or edited 14 books and about 225 scientific publications. He and his wife are the owners of Arid Lands Greenhouses in Tucson, Arizona, and Webb is the former chairman of the International Sansevieria Society. They have traveled extensively in Africa and Arabia, looking for and photographing succulent plants. They have been to Oman, Yemen, Socotra, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Namibia, Botswana, and South Africa.
Webb has been growing succulent plants and cacti for 45 years and, with his wife Toni, is the owner of Arid Lands Greenhouses in Tucson, Arizona, for 20 years. For the last 27 years, he and his wife Toni have travelled extensively in Africa and the Arabian Peninsula looking for Succulent plants. Webb is the former chairman of the International Sansevieria Society and the current editor of its publication Sansevieria. He has described and named 15 species or subspecies of plants, including 2 Agave species from Baja California, Mexico, and 13 Sansevieria species, subspecies, or varieties from East Africa and Somalia.
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