The South West Fuchsia Fellowship has organised a Fuchsia Festival to commemorate the 500th anniversary of the birth of Leonart Fuchs, whom the fuchsia was named after. It will take place at Almondsbury Garden Centre, Over Lane, Almondsbury, Bristol on Saturday 7th July (9.00 a.m. to 6.00 p.m.) and Sunday 8th July (10.30 a.m. to 4.00 a.m.).
Demonstrations all weekend by Ken Pilkington, trade stands, refreshments & tombola. Access for wheelchairs and free parking is available. Admission free - proceeds of the wishing well to St. Peter's Hospice, Bristol. (For further information contact Mr. Peter Holloway 01225 754666)

Hello All
The message below received from Prof. Dr. Franz Oberwinkler.

The University of Tuebingen plans to celebrate Leonhart Fuchs' 500th birthday July 13, 2001. In the afternoon of the same day the Fuchsia Society of Germany will have its Annual Meeting. (Eurofuchsia) For that purpose we have invited Dr. Paul Berry and Dr Frederik Meyer to present contributions. Also the German Association of Botanical Gardens will assembly in Tuebingen for its Annual Meeting. The schedule is not yet definite. There will be an exhibition arranged by the University and the town of Tuebingen, focussing on Leonhart Fuchs and his time. Several towns in which Leonhart Fuchs lived, studied, worked, and taught agreed to co-ordinate celebrations to have a common schedule. The Botanical Garden of the University of Tuebingen is collecting species (not cultivars) of Fuchsia and will display them in summer 2001. I would appreciate to know which Fuchsia species are cultivated by you and your groups in the UK and which ones could be available for an exhibition in Tuebingen.
All the events and activities are open to the public and guests and colleagues are especially welcome. We would be delighted to have you and your friends here in 2001.
With best wishes, Franz Oberwinkler

Anyone interested in more information please contact Professor direct or the University website addresses below. Best wishes, Keith McManus   www.fuchsias-in-focus.co.uk

Prof. Dr. Franz Oberwinkler, Universitaet Tuebingen        e-mail: franz.oberwinkler@uni-tuebingen.de
www.uni-tuebingen.de/  - about the Botanical Garden (mostly under construction)
www.uni-tuebingen.de/uni/bbm/Garten/index.html - about my institute
www.uni-tuebingen.de/uni/bbm/index.html - about Fuchs-festivities in 2001 when  the schedules are definitive.

LEONART FUCHS
Born in 1501, Leonhart Fuchs, in a life of 66 years that passed for long at that time, busied himself translating Galen and Hippocrates into Latin, curing many of the "English Sweating Sickness" in the duchy of Anspach, and finally, until his death, occupying the professorship of medicine at the University of Tuebingen.
For all these distinctions, he would merit only a short paragraph in any modern encyclopedia. But for two others, he deserves a bow from gardeners living now, 500 years later.
In 1542, he published a work of botany, his passionate hobby, entitled De historia stirpium commentarii insignes, in which he described for the first time the common foxglove and attached to its genus forever the name Digitalis.

In 1703, French botanist Charles Plumier, as it was customary in those days to name plants after people, having i.e. named the Begonia after Michel Begon and the Lobelia after Lobel, curator of the Botanical Gardens of Oxford, chose to honour Fuchs by affixing his name (in Nova plantarum Americanum genera) to his description of the plant we now know as Fuchsia triphylla.
Though Plumier is the person that has gone down in history as the first person to describe and draw a fuchsia (F. triphylla), bringing the existence to the attention of the then civilised world, thus, Leonhart Fuchs became associated with Fuchsias. A genus of familiar garden plants he could never have seen (fuchsias were not brought into cultivation in Europe until 1788) nor would he have had the opportunity to examine a dried specimen, or even a drawing, of any of the more than 100 species in the genus that bears his name.  CD