Journal Number 89
December 2003

THE COLUMN

Unnamed, Lumped and Unconfirmed Orchids in NZ
By Eric Scanlen

Can you believe that there are 100 unnamed and lumped orchid taxa in NZ? Look at the Column's list below and you can check for yourself. It lists all the most credible records in the Newsletters and Journals, from issues 1 to 89 including a number pending. Messrs Kelly Rennell and Sid Smithies have sent a number of excellent photos by wire from Southland and their publication is pending. Mark Moorhouse has already given us a taste of what is in store in Nelson in J85:25-26. Do feel free to dispute any in the list that catch in the craw. Five have already been deleted that were either un-lumped or were doubled-up because of inadequate tagging. Possibly there are others but most who have called have had additions not deletions.

The plethora of Pterostylis aff. montana taxa have only two list entries at this stage. The Column has his slide collection in 12 heaps of these montane to subalpine plants, flowering from 17 Sept at Mt Messenger Saddle through to 5 Jan at Whakapapa; some have twisted labella, some don't; some have long dorsal sepal and/or lateral petals, some have them short etc. Which are distinct taxa and which are hybrids is not at all clear but the Column believes it would be safe to add another 5 to the list. Perhaps a concerted effort by those familiar with them, similar to the Nematoceras triloba agg. project mentioned below, will sort out P. aff. montana. Any volunteers?

When the list stood at 91 only, Ian St George was inclined to drop the six alba forms because they don't normally earn specific botanical classification but the Column left them in, firstly to give these strange whites and pale greens some recognition for conservation purposes and secondly because some of them exhibit characters distinct from their normally coloured brethren. If the albas are left in limbo, they could easily get ignored into oblivion; some may have been so already!

Many alba forms have been labelled albinos but it seems they rarely are. When each one is studied or the author is contacted for more information, what usually turns up are either red veins and spots on the leaf or red glands on the dorsal sepal or faint pink stripes, yellow spots or yellow calli in the labella thus discounting the genetic lack of pigment which is albinism. Green doesn't count because in all probability, it stems from the chloroplasts whose DNA is distinct from the plants'.

One neglected alba was Margaret Menzies' white Molloybas cryptanthus at Omoana (Fig. 7 p26) which always flowered on top of the moss or leaf litter unlike M. cryptanthus s.s. which has reddish flecks and flowers out of sight beneath the litter. This alba once flowered prolifically and set seed so it may not be the isolated freak that some thought. The normal plants are saprophytic with no chlorophyll anyway so the albas appear pure white as you can see in Ian St George's picture but, they were "flushed red in their throats" [J49:15] so they weren't albinos either. The colony hasn't been seen since 1994, so disappointing those "two dozen or so" souls [J57:22] on Margaret's celebrated field trip of 5 August 1995. This may be one that has already got ignored into alba oblivion yet its character, of flowering above the moss, indicates that it could well have been a distinct taxon.

Another could be No. 3 on the list, Doug McCrae's green form of Calochilus aff. herbaceus [J62:13] from the Earth Wall Track at Te Paki. It was reported from 1990 until 22 Oct 1996 but not since. The track site has become overshadowed by burgeoning kanuka which might explain its disappearance. The hope is that tubers are still in the soils awaiting suitable conditions.

The puzzle with the alba forms is the lack of in-betweens with the normally coloured plants which usually grow alongside. Some may be recessive mutants like the White Tigers of Rewa in India whose normally coloured hybrids breed either true orange or white (still with black stripes and non-pink eyes) but with no in-betweens either. Others may be distinct species with separate (moth?) pollinators as the Column suspects for the subalpine Nematoceras "triwhite". Any volunteers please, to sit by them all night (not the tigers, the N. "triwhites"!) to check on pollinators?

Most vexing in the list are the increasing number of Nematoceras triloba agg. which are surfacing as, Tricia Aspin, Bruce, Ian, Mark, Kelly, Sid, the Column and others get into their straps detailing all those old and new puzzles in this decade of the triloba. The two newly tagged taxa N. "tridodd" and N. "tribrive" presented in this issue, set the ball rolling for this detailed review of the unnamed, unrecognised and lumped orchids.

The number of N. triloba agg. on the list stands at 26 as at 12 October 2003 but Sid has at least three others from uncharted territory in Southland still getting analysed, Mark is in control of another raft from Nelson and we just know there will be more, don't we? Please get your strange local N. triloba taxa onto the report sheet and into the Editor for comparison and assessment. You could well have a new species there. If you are fairly sure it is unreported, and reasonably wide-spread, please get at least three fresh specimens with habitat details etc, to Brian Molloy for DNA checks and herbarium record.