41st Annual Succulent Plants Symposium

About the Speakers

Jakub Jilemicky
International Speaker

Jakub Jilemicky is a seasoned explorer and botanist with over three decades of experience studying Haworthias, Gasterias, and Conophytum. His journey began with a focus on tourism studies, igniting a passion for South Africa’s flora that led to extensive field expeditions. Over the years, Jilemicky has meticulously documented nearly all described Haworthia species, capturing their beauty through his lens. As a sought-after speaker and photographer, he shares his wealth of knowledge globally, captivating audiences with talks that span continents. His photographs adorn the pages of numerous publications, including contributions to such esteemed works as Robin Frandsen’s Succulents of Southern Africa. Visit his website, haworthia-gasteria.com, to join the journey.

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James Brumder
Associate Director of Garden Operations

James Brumder is associate director of garden operations at The Huntington. Born and raised in Pasadena to two parents who are avid gardeners, he has a lifetime of experience cultivating plants and has a great appreciation for how they are a foundational connection to nature. Brumder’s focus in the gardens is regenerative sustainability through promoting soil health, water management, reducing waste, and growing a resilient living collection by building and restoring healthy ecosystems. He has horticulture experience across the Mediterranean and locally with nursery and landscape management. Brumder was previously regional adviser for BrightView Landscape Company and nursery manager at Theodore Payne Foundation. He is a wholehearted outdoorsman who loves to travel any opportunity he gets and believes it is the best way to understand our world.

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Pamela Koide Hyatt
Bird Rock Tropicals

Since starting her nursery Bird Rock Tropicals in 1981, Pamela Koide Hyatt has traveled extensively throughout Mexico and Central and South America, focusing on the genus Tillandsia. These so-called “air plants” are the largest group in the Bromeliad Family. During her travels, she discovered more than a dozen species new to science as well as many natural hybrids. She grows plants from seed and does hybridizing, with some of her creations receiving prestigious awards. In addition, she is very active with the Bromeliad Society and is a frequent speaker at bromeliad conferences and at plant societies in the United States and abroad. In 2017, she began collaborating with Jeff Chemnick, owner of Mexico Nature Tours, to co-lead ecotours in Mexico to see bromeliads (especially Tillandsias) in habitat.

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Sean C. Lahmeyer
Associate Director, Botanical Collections, Conservation and Research

Sean Lahmeyer serves as the associate director of the botanical collections, conservation and research, providing programmatic, curatorial, and administrative leadership, as well as coordinating all ex-situ conservation activities, including the tissue culture lab, seed bank, and herbarium. Lahmeyer has also been an adjunct instructor of biology—specializing in botany—at Pasadena City College since 2007. He has been featured in online articles published by the Botanical Research Institute of Texas and Armory Center for the Arts; has written articles for Verso, The Huntington’s blog; and has been published in botanical journals.

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John Trager
Bernie and Miyako Storch Curator of the Desert Garden and Collections

John Trager is the Bernie and Miyako Storch Curator of the Desert Garden and Collections at The Huntington, where he has worked since 1983. Prior to that, he worked with master propagator Frank Horwood at Abbey Garden Nursery when it was located in Carpinteria. Trager’s horticultural writings have appeared in the Cactus and Succulent Journal, the Euphorbia Journal, and various other horticultural publications. He is also known for his photography—over 3,000 of his images have been published in numerous textbooks and horticultural journals. The annual ISI introductions, published in the C&S Journal, also provide a venue for his writing and photography. In search of plants (and insects), Trager has traveled to China, Costa Rica, Israel, Mexico, Namibia, South Africa, Taiwan, Thailand, and Venezuela. He holds a bachelor’s degree in horticulture from California State Polytechnic University, Pomona (1992) and earlier studied botany at Santa Barbara City College and University of California, Santa Barbara.

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Wendy Hodgson
Herbarium Curator Emerita and Senior Research Botanist, Desert Botanical Garden

Wendy Hodgson has lived in the Sonoran Desert for 55 years. She holds a B.S. in wildlife biology and an M.S. in botany from Arizona State University, the latter under the mentorship of Donald Pinkava. She began working at the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix as an assistant to famed agave expert Dr. Howard S. Gentry. Today she is the Herbarium Curator Emerita and Senior Research Botanist at the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix, where her research focuses on the Agave subfamily floristics, with a special emphasis on the Grand Canyon, Southwest rare plant species, and Sonoran Desert ethnobotany. She is an avid plant collector, having made over 33,000 herbarium collections. Nearly a quarter of the collections are those challenging cacti, agaves, yuccas, and hesperoyuccas, many of which are from the Grand Canyon. She has described or co-described nine species new to science, including six agaves, with a few more in the hopper. Her book Food Plants of the Sonoran Desert (University of Arizona Press, 2001) received the Klinger Book Award from the Society for Economic Botany. She is an advocate for collaboration, particularly with Indigenous peoples, in the study and conservation of plants and their habitat.