William Colenso's Thelymitra purpureo-fusca was lumped by T.F. Cheeseman into T longifolia.

The flowers are almost indistinguishable but Colenso's species flowers late (although his description [1, 2] doesn't mention a flowering time) with only a few white flowers on short, all purple stems and it really deserves specific mention, in the Column's view. The sepals, with purple/brown backs but with white margins give the buds a typical appearance.

Graham Dickson stirred a new interest in this species when he sent Fig. 33, from Lammermoor Range ER 68, at say 920m altitude, about 15km north of Lawrence. This was on 14 January 2009 which is too late for its close relative, T. longifolia.

Fig. 34 shows the green leaf (?) Colenso wrote, "The whole plant ... of a dusky purple brown or
purplish-red colour" ... but he didn't mention the leaf. Could it be he didn't take much notice of
the leaf? so didn't mention it? or is the leaf variable?

Graham, a NOG member by default for decades but who now has joined the ranks, showed the Column his first Ichthyostomum pygmaeum at Mangatangi Dam site in 1966 and his first Adelopetalum tuberculatum at Clevedon Reserve in 1975 then turned up Stegostyla alpina in ER 67 [J109:32,39] and now Thelymitra purpureo-fusca in ER 68 from whence very few orchids have been reported.

Much further north and a month earlier, the Column and Pastor Dr. Joachim Cochlovius were on Repeater Road in the Hunua's on 14 December; this being the nearest likely site for orchids so late in ER 9's season.

Joachim soon had his camera aimed at an open flower, the last on a cluster of short, purple stemmed T purpureo-fusca. It was sprouting from the grader-trimmed shoulder of this little used access to a TV repeater station.

The Column stood there puzzled as to why a "T. longifolia" was still in flower two months late and on a diminutive, all-purple stem but he still didn't mobilise his camera for this common (?) species.

However, when Graham's pix arrived on a CD and his identical looking sun-orchid was revealed, the penny started to drop. Joachim, back in Germany, was good enough to send Fig. 36, his pic of T purpureo-fusca, from Repeater Rd. some 961 km north of Graham's find.