We attended the Vancouver Island Rock and Alpine Garden Society 2011 Western Winter Study Weekend in Sidney, BC from 25 to 27 February. The theme was Plants Along the Silk Road.

I attended talks Friday night by 

Dr. Bobby J. Ward Modern-Day Plant Hunters and Hans Roemer on The Silk Road through the Wakhan Corridor, Afghanistan

Saturday I heard Vojtěch Holubec on The Celestial Mountains - Tien Shan Alpines and bulbs from Uzbekistan, Kazakstan and Kyrgystan and Bill Terry on Poppies along the Silk Road

(I then skipped out in order to go hiking and then book shopping in Sidney....)

Saturday night we had a fun banquet followed by a nice multimedia show by Yvonne Rorison: Images from Far and Near to Capture the Imagination

Sunday morning I listened to Stephanie Ferguson talk about garden design and plant selection for her Calgary rock garden - Sun, Stone and Water: Growing Exquisite Plants from Remote Alpine and Steppe-Desert Environments.

(Skipped out again for more book shopping...)

Finally, I attended another interesting talk by Vojtěch Holubec on Pamir and Donkeys: How donkeys are important in plant hunting

vi 010

Corydalis is Zygomorphic. Zygomorphic ("yoke shaped", "bilateral") flowers can be divided by only a single plane into two mirror-image halves, much like a yoke or a person's face.