Orthoceras: Coat Of Many Colours From Diggers' Valley Gary Little & Asta Wistrand (see p.17) have a Forest Homestay at Diggers Valley just south of Kaitaia, and they organise fitness programmes in their piece of bush. Just incidentally, they have the most remarkable collection
of unheard of horned orchid (Orthoceras) colour forms.

Other native orchids are there including a September flowering Singularybas oblongus with a palest green dorsal sepal but normal coloured labellum. More about that another time.

Gary has captured a range of Orthoceras with his camera. Are they O. novae-zeelandiae or
O. strictum or both including hybrids?

To help answer these questions, we once called all our NZ horned orchids Orthoceras strictum until 1989 when Australian taxonomists David Jones and Mark Clements wrote that NZ didn't have O. strictum and that ours should rightly be called O. novae zeelandiae, borrowing from A. Richard who named NZ's species, Diuris novae-zeelandiae in 1832. Since then we have found that Australia and NZ both have both forms with...

A. rounded labella and short floral bracts, taken to be O. novae-zeelandiae,

B. acuminate labella, long floral bracts and earlier flowering, taken to be O. strictum

... plus combinations of these characters in different colour forms.

All are happy under the common name, horned orchid which the taxonomists have no mandate
to change.

Dan Hatch classified the green one as O. strictum R. Br. forma viride Hatch, in 1946 but it has not been widely accepted on the premise that it is only a colour aberration lacking anthocyanin.

The Column has pix of a khaki aberration (Fig. 19) from Tapuwae near Benneydale but Gary has aberrations in yellow, green, wine, purple and mixed colours with the combo of characters depicted as in the illustrations.

What do you think?