Journal Number 101
November 2006

AUSTRALIAN NOTES

Australasian Native Orchid Society
The Warringah Group Inc.
By Peter Eygelshoven.
(Peter is also editor of The Orchadian - Ed)

Our Group was formed in October 1964. It was the third ANOS Group to be created under the ANOS Council. Meetings were originally held in a small hall at the Stoney Range Flora Reserve in Dee Why on Sydney's northern beaches. In return for free access to the hall members maintained the orchid collection around the reserve and bush house, they also helped with maintenance around the 7.5 hectare reserve, building dams and bridges.

When the hall became too small the Group moved to a slightly larger church hall in Curl Curl. They again outgrew this hall and moved to our present hall at Forestville. The larger Senior Citizen Hall is ample for the monthly benching of around forty to sixty plants each month.

Our meetings usually have around the thirty members each month and we hold a membership list of about eighty five members. Our yearly Spring Show is held in the much larger community hall next door on the second weekend in September. We meet at 8.00pm on the third Tuesday of each month in the Senior Citizen Hall, Forestville and visitors are most welcome.

The club logo is Caleana major, The Flying Duck Orchid, and is still quite common in the area.

As a Bicentennial Project in 1988, several members surveyed the bushland in the northern beaches area finding around sixty five different species. They produced a booklet and with the financial help of the local council in producing this booklet, copies were given to the Warringah Shire Council, the local National Parks and Wildlife Service and local libraries. Now, nearly some twenty years later, the Group will endeavour to update the list of orchids by surveying the bushland reserves and National Parks in the northern beaches area.

This project will go over the next three or four years with monthly walks as a group or by individuals volunteering to go out in their own time to see what can be added to the known species list. With two large National Parks and many other reserves in our immediate area we should be able to increase this list by another ten to twenty species.

The Blue Mountains are less than two hours away and Warringah Group often has day trips to see the orchids of this region and we invite the other Sydney Groups to join us. The orchids and the habitat are different to what we see around the coast line so it becomes a wonderful change and a great day out. We organise reciprocal visits with other groups, with them visiting our meeting one month and us visiting theirs another.

Our group celebrated its 25th with a wonderful dinner in the community hall at Forestville and recently celebrated its 40th with a delicious Chinese banquet. From all the members of ANOS Warringah Group we wish your group the best for your 25th birthday anniversary and hope your Group enjoys many more and bigger anniversaries in the future.