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.

Orchid Conservation International Awards for 2006. The OCI Trustees announced awards for orchid conservation projects for 2006; among them were:

Epiphyte orchid distribution and population dynamics on a disturbance gradient in Andean cloud forests, proposed by Ana Maria Benavides Duque and Angela Patino, will be carried out in an area of the world that is particularly orchid rich.

Johnson Bridgwater of WildShare International has been awarded funding to assist with an Orchid Conservation Program in the El Cielo Biosphere Reserve, for establishing a botanical garden, arboretum and herbarium in the El Cielo Biosphere Reserve in Mexico.

Khaled Hamdan at the American University of Beirut has been awarded a start-up grant for his project Towards a Sustainable Orchids Monitoring Program in the Shouf Reserve in The Lebanon. The flora of The Lebanon has not been revised or updated since the 1960's and the status of orchids, similar to most plant species, remains unchecked.

Kevin Matthews "Thought you would enjoy the attached pix... of these fragrant variant Thelymitra pulchella from near Kaitaia" (Cover, Fig.14, 15). He sent the photograph (Fig.16) of Thelymitra aft'. pauciflora in mid-December.

Kevin emailed again (15 Jan 07), "Attached are pix of flowers which were taken on the same two-leaf Thelymitra plant (e.g. Fig.17). I have over twelve two-leaf Thelymitra cyanea, with four having progressed through to flowering. The others will probably, at this late stage, bear no fruit. I'm fairly sure that those without flower are T. cyanea because they are within the same colonies.

There is no notable difference in flower from the single leaf form, but it is worthwhile recording that these Thelymitra do occur with more than one leaf. The two-leaf Thelymitra flowers have well formed pods and I believe they will produce viable seed. It would be interesting to see the plant form from this seed. I have found other two-leaf Thelymitra associated with variant Thelymitra pulchella.

Just for something different today I found a 3-leaved Thelymitra with a very short peduncle and a single flower that most likely failed to mature. I have it marked for the new season flowering period. I also have a few two-leaved Thelymitra at Lake Ohia which I discovered after they had flowered and I also intend to follow up on them next time round. I'm going to have to invest in a GPS - I've got bits of plastic tied on trees all over the place for markers!"

Phil Norton (Blenheim) walked the Kepler track between Christmas and New Year. Among the usual orchids in the area he was interested in this Pterostylis (outside back cover).

"Having read the comments in your field guide I am interested in your opinion as to whether this is the P. australis as discussed there. It certainly has shorter leaves than I am used to in this region and the dorsal is not as extended. The plants varied in size from about 150mm to 250 mm high. I did not see any of what I would consider typical P. banksii amongst the various groups...."

Well, I think it's the same plant that I saw at Fox Glacier car park in January 2005, and the same as that illustrated by Eric Scanlen from Southland [in J91 p 11], and labelled by him as a P. banksii x australis hybrid - Ed.

The Trans (The Transactions and Proceedings of the New Zealand Institute, and the Transactions of the Royal Society of New Zealand) are now digitised and available on line!

The Royal Society (known as the NZ Institute before 1933) was established in 1867 to coordinate and assist the activities of a number of regional research societies including the Auckland Institute, the Wellington Philosophical Society and the Otago Institute. These societies often did not have the means to publish the papers that were presented to them or maintain a written record of their activities.

The NZ Institute was set up to remedy this through the publication of a single volume of transactions and proceedings on their behalf: the papers from one year were published in the following year.

Now you have easy access to the orchid papers of Colenso, Hatch, Cheeseman, Buchanan, Moore, Thomson, Petrie, Berggren and others. There is a separate file of the published illustrations.

The digitisation project has been carried out by the National Library in consultation with the Royal Society. The original volumes are from the collections of the Alexander Turnbull Library.

Go to http://rsnz.natlib.govt.nz/volume/ for a full set. This is a marvellous asset.

The yellow and brown colour form of Gastrodia "long column" was flowering at Barton's Bush in Upper Hutt in late January.

Volume 5 of Australian Orchid Research has just been published: "New taxa of Australian Orchidaceae" and it is of marginal interest to NZ orchidophiles. There are five major papers, all authored by David Jones with various colleagues.

1: Fourteen new taxa of Orchidaceae from northern and eastern Australia and two new combinations from New Guinea. Mostly tropical genera, none shared with NZ.

2: Towards a revision of the Thelychiton speciosus group.

3. Miscellaneous new species of Australian Orchidaceae. Jones describes 24 new species in Arachnorchis, nine new Calochilus species (none of them in NZ), a new Chiloglottis, a new Corunastylis, seven new Pterostylis, and a range of others.

4: Towards a revision of Bunochilus. This is the multiflowered group of Pterostylis, typically that were once known as Pterostylis longifolia.

5: Fourteen new species of Prasophyllum from Eastern Australia. Well, who knows which of these might be in NZ?