Journal Number 110
November 2008

THE COLUMN

Pterostylis "pulchragalea" (was P. "Blyth")
By Eric Scanlen

The Editor and the Column were viewing some old and faded prints from H.B. Matthews quarter plate negatives at the Auckland War Memorial Museum Library, when one figuratively leapt out as Pterostylis "Blyth" [J105:28,29,32) complete with finger-like extension to a right twisted labellum and lateral sepals curled just at the tips. Henry had photographed it at and written it up in his 1928 Ms descriptions, reprinted in Matthews and Son on Orchids, but omitted to mention those three distinguishing traits underlined.

Thus the Column, who compiled that booklet before he connected his photos of the same taxon from three separate locations, decided in error that Henry was onto P. irwinii. Please accept the Column's apologies and do mark the correction to P. "pulchragalea" in J105 and your copy of Matthews and Son on Orchids.

Waimarino, incidentally, no longer exists under that name. Can any readers enlighten us as to where it used to be? The Waimarino Stream still meanders through the swamp at Erua where Bruce Irwin first spotted P. irwinii and continues south towards the Waimarino Forest west of Raetihi but we have not be able to determine where Henry stayed at the Waimana Boarding house in Waimarino when he wrote to Mr Petrie on 22 Dec 1921. A Waimarino River drops into Lake Taupo NE of Turangi. So Waimarino may have been on one side or the other of Whakapapa from whence Bruce Irwin drew his identical Pterostylis aff. montana "late" and the Column captured the third pic of P. "Blyth".

This taxon is being entered into the forthcoming Colour Field Guide as Pterostylis "pulchragalea".