The 13th ICPS Conference will be held in Himeji Japan on May 22-24, 2020. Himeji is renowned for its castle, which is a World Heritage site and one of Japan’s most beautiful and well-preserved castles. The conference will be held at a site just 8-minutes walk away from this historical masterpiece.

The conference will be held in the Large Hall on the 6th floor of the Biz-Space, a conference facility which is located a 7-minute walk from Himeji Station, within walking distance of more than 20 hotels. During the 3-day conference, plant exhibitions and sales booths will be open in the Middle Hall on the 5th floor of the Biz Space.

The lectures and poster presentations will cover diverse topics including leading-edge scientific research, informative reports from carnivorous plant habitats all over the world, and horticultural techniques. Lectures will be translated by professional interpreters to encourage participation and discussion between Japanese and Western participants.

The conference dinner will be held in the banquet room “Ciel” on the 14th floor of the Hotel Monterey Himeji, located directly north of Himeji Station, on Saturday May 23. There you can enjoy a good mix of Japanese and Western cuisines and Japanese sake and wine, together with an impressive nighttime view of Himeji Castle through the windows.

On Monday May 25, there will be a special day trip by bus to two botanical gardens near Himeji. In the Tegarayama Conservatory Botanical Garden, many Nepenthes hybrids created in Japan can be seen as well as giant Nepenthes truncata (50-cm tall pitcher). The Hyogo Pref. Flower Center has Japan’s premier collection of carnivorous plants, and is one of the reasons we chose Himeji as the conference site. Don’t miss this opportunity to meet the colossal Nepenthes clipeata, N. pervillei, and N. khasiana grown there!

Two optional field trips are planned on May 26 and 27. On Tuesday May 26, we will drive to Abiki Marsh in Kasai City and another habitat around Nishiwaki City, where we will see Drosera rotundifolia, D. tokaiensis and D. lunata. Then we will take a Shinkansen train to Tokyo for an overnight stay. On the following day (May 27), we will take a Tobu Express train to Nikko City and visit the habitat of Pinguicula ramosa, the Japanese endemic butterwort. Hopefully we can see flowers blooming, but this is not guaranteed as it depends on the weather at the time of our visit.

The 13th ICPS Conference will be hosted by the Japanese Carnivorous Plant Society (JCPS) with the cooperation of the Kansai Carnivorous Plant Society (KCPS), the Tokai Carnivorous Plant Society (TCPS) and the Hiroshima Carnivorous Plant Society (HCPS). These 4 societies cover the Kanto, Kansai, Tokai and Sanyo regions, respectively, and have been collaborating with each other and contributing to the prevalence and awareness of carnivorous plants in Japan.