Journal Number 114
November 2009

Notes etc

DAVID JONES HAS DESCRIBED three new species of Oligochaetochilus from South Australia [Orchadian 2009; 16 (3): 119] and five threatened new species of Hymenochilus from southern Australia [Orchadian 2009; 16: 176.

MIKE LUSK EMAILED, "Here are pictures of Te Mata Peak Diplodium alobulum with two flowers,
of which I've found 2 and many more each with a long whisker opposite the uppermost bract.
Eric tells me that the whiskers emerge where a second flower might have been.

The plants are growing on a very dry clay bank under mainly Eucalyptus and Pinus radiata, and some are emerging through Pyrosia eleagnifolia."

Figure 11 - Diplodium alobulum	Figure 12 - D alobulum	Figure 13 - D alobulum

VIC VERCOE WAS "... copying some orchid slides to my digital camera & came across this albino looking Pterostylis. I took the pic on 29 Nov. 86 on the Iron Gate Track alongside the Oroua river."

Figure 14 - Albino Pterostylis		Figure 15 - Albino Pterostylis

JAN KELLY EMAILED (29 August), "I have two photos of a Passion Vine Leaf Hopper at its springy plumed stage, thought that one of them might just be an insect using an orchid stem as a perch, but two indicates a more specific interest perhaps. Both taken when we lived in Albany, one on a Microtis stem, the other is on Orthoceras novae-zeelandiae and seems to be inside the flower.

Fig. 18 shows Passion Vine Leaf Hopper, Scolypoda australis, on a sparse Microtis - a second one at the top, perhaps. Not a good photo but I kept it anyway. We had a great many of these Leaf Hoppers from season to season, they were particularly crowded on the young stems of Blechnum ferns.

Fig. 19 Orthoceras: the photo shows a leaf hopper tail inside the centre top of the flower.
Quite obviously a small spider has found the orchid a good structural shape to build on.
Whether it hides inside the flower I don't know, but the flower would be a safe location for it.

Fig. 20: Pterostylis "blue-tongue": here it is, it was very common on one slope, just at the bush line where Manuka scrub met Kauri forest."

Figure 18 - Microtis	Figure 19 - Orthoceras	Figure 20 - Pterostylis

Figs. 21-22 Singularybas oblongus, intact, and eaten away, in Kauri litter. It took me three seasons to get that good photo, the flower was already gone the first two times I found it.

I saw a miniature snail on its stem once (not on the flower) but didn't get a photo. There is a rounded shape under the leaf that could be a snail or a water drop, possibly the latter.

Figure 21 - Singularybas oblongus		Figure 22 - Singularybas oblongus

I've included a photo of one of the local snails on nearby Kahikatea fruit, though, for comparison in size. (Fig 23) There are a number of different miniature snails in that leaf litter, mostly unidentified it seems.

Figure 23 - Local Snail on Kahikatea Fruit

I've been hunting through the orchid discards from Haast, not having deleted them irrevocably, and came across this beauty (inside front cover) - knocked out of the collection because I had got the stem in focus rather than the flowers. Can see 12 thrips right off, and some other things - several aphids, and perhaps two very small cicada-types sitting head to head on the right. We shall go back this coming summer and see if we can do better at this site.

PHOTOGRAPHER KATHLEEN SHEPHERD'S website has some good orchid photographs, among them two excellent shots of the big Southland / West Coast Pterostylis - she calls it Pterostylis "bluff". Go to http://www.westofsouthernalps.co.nz/Gallery. native orchids.htm.

Phil Norton's photo of the same taxon is shown at http://www.sailsashore.co.nz/orchids/orchids.htm.

		DARWIN QUOTE for this issue: "False views, if supported by some evidence, do little harm, for every one takes a salutary pleasure in proving their falseness: and when this is done, one path towards error is closed and the road to truth is often at the same time opened." (Descent of man, Ch.XXI.

JAN KELLY " photographed this (Figs 16,17) from the DOC boardwalk at Hapuka estuary, Okuru, south of Haast, on January 16 this year.

All the orchids in this spray had brown marks. I've just checked another set of photos of Earina
autumnalis seen in the Waitutu forest in Southland this February, and the petals on those ones are
all quite perfect."

Interesting shots, not just for the Thrips, but for the spots. Colenso sent a specimen to Hooker in October 1848, "1607. Earina rupestris, W.C. dry rocks, base of range, banks of R. Makororo; labellum curiously dotted, &c" Hooker identified it as Earina autumnalis, which he wrote, had "Flowers as in E. mucronata, but crowded, white, speckled". - ED

Figure 16 - Earina autumnalis		Figure 17 - Earina autumnalis