Journal Number 100
August 2006
THE COLUMN
Thelymitra aff. longifolia "stunted"
By Eric Scanlen
 Photo left shows Bev Woolley's eye admiring this denizen of sandy track sides at Scott Point.
By rights it should have been tagged T. "V-shortifolia", because that short, Vee section, curled leaf is quite unlike the long, floppy, strap-like one sported by T. aff. longifolia or the more southern T. longifolia, even though the flowers from all three bear an uncanny resemblance to each other.
The Column's unusually long tag name (anathema for indexing) was only to deter the brickbat hurlers because no one seems to mind a writer adding a tag to a taxon with which they are already familiar.
At Scott Point (head of Ninety Mile Beach) these plants cannot be missed and for years the field parties just ignored them as starved and struggling T. aff. longifolia.
Bruce Irwin first gave them Journal mention with half a sentence in J65:15, Dec. 1997. But on 10 Oct. 2002, we spotted them with healthy, wide-open flowers [J86:10,12 Fig.02] and interest was definitely "stirred but not shaken".
A permitted collection for Dr Brian Molloy on 31 Oct 2004, saw the team studying a range of
these plants, finding that height varied from the 40mm of the J86 plant to say 150mm, possibly
depending either on nutrients available or because of hybridisation with the other forms of
T. aff. longifolia?
Bev posed for Fig. 34 on that same day. Brian has sent this specimen to his colleagues in
Canberra (pers. comm.) for DNA sampling of its ITS portions of the genome, which is known
for its fairly consistent separation of genera and species.
No news as yet.
Going back 107 years, R.H. Matthews saw this orchid, it seems, near Kaitaia and he sent some
specimens to T.F. Cheeseman on 19 Sept. and 3 Oct 1899. Cheeseman seemed to be
unimpressed, going by the lack of response in the Matthews' correspondence to him. RHM
mentioned this orchid several times in later letters and asked Cheeseman about it finally on
5 Oct 1903.
No more is heard of it in RHM's letters so one is left wondering what Cheeseman's replies were, to quell such an active interest. There is no mention of it in Cheeseman's 1906 and 1925 Manuals.
Like RH Matthews, the Column sees the curled V section leaf, diminutive stature and sand habitat as distinct from T. aff. longifolia and wonders why it has been ignored for so long.
If one looks at Thomas Duncanson's June 1823 watercolour of "T. longifolia" [J92:8,13] it could have been Bev's plant he painted it from, at Kew 147 years ago; they look so similar. But, according to the original ink script with the painting, Thomas's plant was sent to Kew in 1822 by Allan Cunningham from New South Wales, of all places, whence it has never otherwise been reported. Possibly someone from New Zealand had delivered it to Cunningham who, incidentally, had been in Australia since 1816 and he sent this curiosity on to Kew.
Other possibilities are covered in the Editor's J92 article but the upshot was that Duncanson painted T. aff. longifolia "stunted" as sure as "eggs is eggs", wouldn't you say?
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