In 2014, the Society decided to inaugurate an Annual Lecture from a distinguished speaker on a subject of current interest or concern.
2020 Lecture
Annual Lecture: 08 October: History of The Phoenix Park and its Trees by John McCullen.
2019 Lecture
10th October 3pm at The National Botanic Gardens Dublin.
Seamus O'Brien discussing the flora of Tasmania after his trip in January 2018.
Free admission. Open to the public.
2018 Lecture
Please note the date of the Annual lecture has had to be changed and is now in the Botanic Gardens on Monday 15 October at 2.30pm.
15th October, 2018, 2.30pm at The National Botanic Gardens Dublin. Lecturer; John Anderson, Keeper of the Gardens Windsor Great Park.
‘Arboreal treasures cultivated in Irish and British Gardens’. Free Admission, Open to the public.
2017 Lecture
This year's lecture will be given by Thomas Pakenham. His title is Who Speaks for the Trees?: the first 25 years of the Irish Tree Society. Thomas was a founding member of the Society in 1990 and continues as our distinguished chairman. The lecture will be in National Botanic Gardens, Glasnevin on 5 October at 2pm. No booking is required, and the lecture is open to members' guests and the general public.
2016 Lecture
The 2016 lecture, open to all ITS members, their guests and to the general public, will be held on October 6, 2016 at 2.00pm in the National Botanic Gardens, Glasnevin, Dublin by kind permission of its Director, Dr. Mathew Jebb.
Tony Kirkham, Head of the Arboretum at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, will give a lecture entitled Managing Threats to Ornamental Trees. http://www.botanicgardens.ie/news/events.htm
Read an Evening Standard interview with Tony Kirkham
2015 Lecture
The inaugural lecture was held on 15 April 2015 in the National Botanic Gardens, Glasnevin, Dublin. The speaker was Martin Gardner M B E, Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh and his topic was
Conifers in Crisis: the work of the International Conifer Conservation Programme.
The lecture was recorded for the Society and you can view it by clicking the link below and then entering the password conifer1
As a result of recent conservation assessments, some 200 of 615 conifer species worldwide are known to be threatened with extinction by human activities. Since 1991, the International Conifer Conservation Programme (ICCP), based at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, has developed a range of initiatives - taxonomic, genetic, horticultural - to help conserve the most threatened conifer species. This includes establishing a network of in situ and ex situ sites internationally, including Ireland.
Martin Gardner has been associated with ICCP since its establishment and is a leading expert on this issue. He has published extensively and actively for the past 20 years on endangered conifers, especially those of Latin America (notably Chile) and New Caledonia. He has visited over 30 countries to study and collect research materials of threatened conifers.