Unfortunately, the length of the Venusian day means that Earth-like conditions are almost certainly never going to arise on Venus. Plants don't take very kindly to baking in the sun for 116 days and then having a 116 day absence of light. Could this be overcome with some large-scale engineering? Perhaps, but there will never be open, lush fields on the surface there.
116 days of no light is really not all that different than places which have a winter that gets below freezing. Most plants in places with a winter die, fall and spring back up every single year. Where I live, first frost to last frost is on average about 120 days.
Also, you should see the size of the vegetables that grow near the poles where they have short summers but very long days,
> Plants don't take very kindly to baking in the sun for 116 days and then having a 116 day absence of light.
Some of them don't mind that much, actually. There have even been experiments growing plants with 2 weeks of light followed by 2 weeks of darkness, as on the moon. It can work if the 2 weeks of darkness are also at lowered temperature, which is easy to achieve in the absence of sunlight.
The exotic species of plant used in the experiment? The pea.
OK, so, you know (or you may not) how when you're in the desert, and it's approaching midday, the temperature just rises, and rises? Imagine the hour around midday not being an hour, but 10 days. Insolation, even at our distance (remember, inverse square law), is punishing. On venus, it's ridiculous.
Venusian colonisation will have to be sub-surface, even if we cover it in water - at least until if and when we come up with a gigantic solar shield that can filter and weaken a planet's worth of sunlight.
> Insolation, even at our distance (remember, inverse square law), is punishing. On venus, it's ridiculous.
Venusian colonization will probably be high up in the atmosphere, where temperatures and pressures are often going to be around the same as in San Francisco.
