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Journal Number 101
November 2006
NOTES etc
Dr Michael Fay, Chair of IUCN Orchid Specialist Group, emailed, "A brief note to let you know
that our webmaster Graham Smith has made quite a lot of changes and updates on the Orchid
Conservation International webpages (including new trustees etc.).
If you would like to see what these changes are, visit http://www.orchidconservation.org/.
He will now begin to make changes to the OSG site, so watch this space. In the meantime,
he
has set up the standard address for the OSG webpages to http://www.orchidconservation.org/osg/". |
Ken Davey (New Plymouth) wrote, "In November several years ago I made a rough record of orchids growing on a farm in the Motu/Matawai area high in the Raukumara ranges between Gisborne and Opotiki.
The farm runs from 650m (1900') a.s.l. to 1030m (3100') a.s.l. and has heavily grazed areas to bush remnants at the higher elevations. The bush was logged in the 1930s and is now winter grazed, but with all year round access when feed is short.
Growing on the roadside banks at the lower parts of the farm were many clumps and single plants of Thelymitra spp with a range of leaf forms, habits, flower numbers per stem and flower colour, where the banks were crumbling the pale carrot shaped tubers were very noticeable. One particular form wherever it occurred was infected with a rust like disease.
Microtis spp (at least 3) or similar were present on several banks in the same area.
On a damp stream bank with no stock access were 2 small colonies of Corybas but no flowers
or seed capsules.
On the way up to the bush edge were several areas of exposed rock, often with good patches
of Earina sp. (poss E. autumnalis) out of reach of stock, with thick coriaceous leaves and thick stems with very short internodes.
There are several small gullies with small bush remnants in them and it was possible to find plants of Earina autumnalis, E. mucronata, Winika cunninghamii and occasionally Drymoanthus sp.
As the altitude rose the numbers of Thelymitra dropped off but it never disappeared.
Just inside the lower altitude bush edge Pterostylis sp. were still flowering (with seed pods present) on the shady side of the track and there were a few Thelymitra flowering on the sunny side. In the bush the Pterostylis occurred as solitary plants or at best widely spaced clumps.
On some of the tracks a few Chiloglottis sp. occurred as small clumps, green flowers with reddish calli.
In a boggy area near the top of the bush with very little stock access were a few colonies of
a Corybas? with very small green flowers.
At the top of the bush in a steep and more exposed area of poor stunted open bush with a
track through it were a large number of plants that were in many cases still to flower, these
I tried to identify mainly by their leaves and came up with Microtis, Prasophyllum, Orthoceras,
and Caladenia (with hairy leaves).
On a neighbouring property that goes even higher, in open scrubby grassland were a number of solitary plants of an Orthoceras sp. about 50-60 cm tall in full flower.
I don't know if this general area has been botanised very much and suspect that a number of other orchids could be found with a proper search." |
Steve Reekie emailed, "I was out on point Elizabeth, just north of Greymouth on Tuesday
afternoon, and espied this pretty Nematoceras flowering on a mossy bank, on a cliff high
above the sea.
I'll leave it to you to put a name to it, if the photographs give you enough to go by.
There were a few flowering there. Any ideas?" - see photo's below.
This is one of the N. rivulare complex, perhaps closer to the Type species than to N. longipetalum - Ed.
 
Mark Clements emailed, "The description of Nematoceras sulcatum has been accepted for
publication in the next issue of Telopea and has also been used by David Jones in his new
book on Australian orchids.
This is the name given to the newly discovered N. aff. trilobum from Macquarie Island - Ed.
New CD: Australian Orchid Genera Key: at http://www.orchidaceousbooks.com.au/OB12286.html.
Mark Moorhouse emailed, "My daughter Kendyll sent the attached pic of the Nematoceras
we couldn't identify last year at Bullock Creek, just North of Punakaiki, West Coast, because
we arrived too late in the season.
This year she visited 3 weeks earlier only to find that on 30 July she was looking at the last
flowering plant in the colony, others all done. It seems to be N. longipetalum. This falls at
the early end of the known flowering season but raises a question.
Why are the plants at the southernmost part of its known range flowering at the earliest
known times in the seasonal variance? It seems anomalous. Surely it's logical to expect
just the opposite."
Mark Moorhouse also sent the convincing photograph of his two local forms of Stegostyla:
S. lyallii and S. "minor".
Mark emailed again, "I thought you would find these two attached pics pretty interesting.
They were taken by Georgina Upson in the Wairoa Valley, Eastern Ranges of Nelson on Sept. 3rd.
I can't say that I have ever seen
one quite like it, even after several years of intensive study of
local Nematoceras populations. … the short tepals almost certainly preclude it from anything
but N. orbiculatum, which it's not remotely like."
 
Pat Enright sent specimens of Nematoceras to Brian Molloy, whose reply is a nicely instructive description of the species: "Your collection matches Colenso's description and type material of Nematoceras hypogaeum which he collected between 1880 and 1883 from beech forest at Norsewood.
The leaves are much broader than long, distinctly trilobate at the apex with broad spreading basal lobes, shiny above and below with occasional purplish spots and suffusions and with a purplish sheen below.
The flowers are small, distinctly recurved on the peduncle. The dorsal is narrow, greenish with purple striations and the labellum is dark purple with a greenish central boss, laciniate margins especially at the base, and copious long pale and purple papillae on the inside towards the base. The petals are relatively short and the plant overall has a purplish hue." |
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