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H/10/1966-1-
October 4-1966 - In our 103rd Year
At Oakwood with John and Dorothy Weske
Evidently John and Dorothy Weske had a dream to take mature
in the raw and make something out of it, for that is exactly what
it appears to have happened in this pretty woodland area. It is
obvious to any visitor that they have worked hard to preserve the
natural beauty, as well as to prepare suitable places for many var-
ieties of horticulture to grow around them. The greenhouse, ter-
races and the landscapin- all show fascinatin- results of the
Weske team handiwork.
After the usual delicious variety and quantity of food, we
settled down to the meeting at 7:40pm, called to order by President
Ulric Hutton. He welcomed our host's guest from Germany, Pastor
Hinrichs; and we were sorry to miss the following members: Claire
Hutton, the Hussmans and the Wilsons. After a minor correction re-
garding Sir Walter Raleigh's shipment of potatoes to England, the
minutes of last meeting were approved as read by the Secretary.
The President reminded the meeting that the terms of its officers
were just about ended and it was time for a nominating committee to
get busy with a new slate for next Spring. He named the following
members to serve on that committee: Douglas Farquhar, Mary Reading
Miller and Francis Thomas.
Harry Goff brought in a very interesting article on the
Climatron in St. Louis, Missouri. The Climatron is a very fancy
greenhouse, a geodesic dome 70 feet high, built for research and
display in 1960 at a cost of three-quarters of a million dollars.
It holds bout 1000 different plants in a computerized climate
control system with two air conditioning systems, one moving warm
air through the building from South to North, the other sending
cool air from West to East.
This precisely controlled temperature and humidity allows
plants to thrive from such different places as Africa, New Guinea,
Mexico, India and scores of other tropical locales. The big problem
is not keeping them warm in the winter, but keeping them cool in the
summer. The usual solution is to tint the glass, but while holding
out the heat, this would lower the light level so that many tropical
plants would never bloom. The Climatron avoids this problem by
letting all the light in, and then pumping out the heat through air
control. If the temperature gets above 82 degrees, the air is passed
through a curtain of water to cool it and add moisture.
One of the features is the tropical pool, containing water
lilies, papayas, mangrove, other plants and tropical fish. A plas-
tic tunnel allows the visitor to walk beneath this pool to study
these aquatic plant roots and tropical fish to better advantage.
An Englishman named Henry Shaw, who sold hardware to the westward
bound pioneers, retired here in 1840 at the age of 40, and built
these gardens on his estate. It became both a showplace and a
botanical laboratory for scientists. A visit to the Climatron is
well worth the time, and may be your only chance to see some tropi-
cal plants flourishing in their natural form. Among all these
present at this meeting, it seems that your Secretary and his wife
were the only ones who had already enjoyed this visit.
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