November 13th at 7pm PST
Redlands Church of the Nazarene
1307 East Citrus Avenue
Redlands, CA 92374
My name is Paul Sternberg. I have had a deep and life-guiding interest in succulent plants for my entire life, at least since I can remember (age 6 or so), and I have had those plants near me for all that time, I’ve lived in Southern California all my life, except for 6 years near Sacramento.
I have degrees in geology and soil science from UC Riverside, and worked there as a researcher for 33 years. I found out about Gates C&S Society around 1974 and joined. I also found out about the amazing nursery scene down in north San Diego County, and made many trips down to Vista. Got to know Dave Grigsby and others. When my new wife
Karen and I were thinking about where we might want to live someday, Vista came up (she had joined me on plant trips there). We ended up moving there, and the 60+ mile one-way daily trips to UCR became a lifestyle for over 20 years. I found out about cycads from a 1978 C&S Journal dedicated to them, but it was about 15 years later that my interest escalated. I had forever been hauling my plant collection around to each new place I lived, along with one each of the two commonest cycads (a “sago palm” and a Dioon edule, plants from the local K-Mart). Those two plants stood out to Karen, and the rest is history. Cycads had been too expensive for me to consider buying, but with Karen’s interest we could justify this extravagance.
Vista was affordable, but to get what we wanted (an acre or more of property) we still had to work extra, in this case meaning we had to build our own house. We did this, preserving as much of the native chaparral on the property as possible. In the mid ‘90s we started our small cycad nursery, a major reason being to make the plants a little more available and affordable. Karen and I have co-owned and operated Living Cycads Nursery since. We have made trips to South Africa to see plants in habitat, and made connections for importing. All the cycads are CITES Appendix I, so trade is strictly controlled.
We love lots of kinds of plants, but primarily ones that can grow outside in our climate and with minimal water. So, it’s natural for us to grow different plants together in the ground. Very many cycads grow in natural plant communities that include countless succulents, cacti, caudiciforms, and trees, and in some special locations form part of the natural arid and semi-arid paradise that we all cherish.
