Journal Number 95
May 2005

THE COLUMN

Old Caladenia Paintings at AK
By Eric Scanlen

The AK Herbarium at the War Memorial Museum Auckland (under "W" in the white pages) has a collection of fine paintings of native plants, including about 36 of orchids, by the Column's great aunts, Eleonore & Lydia Blumhardt and their life-long friend Claire Scott [J51:18, 52:37].

One by Lydia circa 1910 from Whangarei, has the only two Caladenias included in the collection (Figs A & B); one is clearly a C. bartlettii with its obtuse sepals, pink tepals shading back to white and all four lateral tepals in a flat plane. cf. Jean Smith's (nee Bartlett) painting J78:33 & colour page 4.

Both Lydia and Jean painted from the now uncommon green stemmed form [J78:37] but Jean's was some 49 years later when her father, Frank Bartlett, pointed this species out to Dan Hatch and the botanic world started to take notice.

Interestingly, Doug McCrae [J78:34], the Editor [J53:7] and Henry B. Matthews, all referred to Caladenia bartlettii, as C. minor. Henry, in a letter to T.F. Cheeseman of 14 Oct 1912, says in part, "the centre petals (lateral sepals) of C. minor are rounded".

In a way, Henry & Doug were right for their times because it seems that JD Hooker's 1853 Flora lumped all the northern Caladenia into his description of C. minor [J72:23].

M.Clements, in Australian Orchid Research Vol.1, 1989, remedied this by designating Hooker's one specimen with the toothed midlobe as the isolectotype for C. minor. Only C. bartlettii plus two disputed and rare taxa have rounded lateral sepals; the 2 are C. aff. bartlettii [J78:colour page 3] and, with narrowly rounded sepals, C. aff. pusilla [J92:13].

Getting back to the paintings, the other orchid in Lydia's painting is indubitably C. "nitida rosea" which can be white or pink.  But its larger size (than C. bartlettii) red mid-ribs to the outer side of the tepals, (which Henry missed in his Ms description) reddish stem and the floral bract partly sheathing the ovary, are characters of only C. "nitida rosea".

Eleonore seems to have painted from the same flower (both included the red lower bract whereas this bract is often green) but from a different angle, albeit with the lateral sepals tipped down, possibly with artists' licence.

These are the first known records of C. "nitida rosea" but Eleonore missed the C.. bartlettii and Claire painted no Caladenias at all. The artists made no attempt to name the orchids. Perhaps they had read Hooker's Flora, noticed that neither of them matched Fitch's drawing of Caladenia minor so declined to risk any name. What do you think?

The C. bartlettii painting was done some 42 years before Dan Hatch classified it (as Caladenia carnea var.  bartlettii [1]) and C. "nitida rosea" was painted 21 years before Henry described it as such in manuscript. It remains unclassified to this day, some 95 years later.
 

Acknowledgements
Many thanks to Ewen Cameron, Curator of the AK Herbarium for permission to publish these paintings; to Bruce Ralston, Librarian at the Auckland Museum and his staff for access to HB Matthews's letters to TF Cheeseman from their archives; to Anthony Wright, Director, Canterbury Museum for information; to Dan Hatch for lending transcripts from H.B. Matthews manuscripts and to Ian St George for doing the OCR scans of them.

Any member knowing the whereabouts of T.F. Cheeseman's replies to RH & HB Matthews' letters would also get grateful acknowledgement for that information.

Reference
1. Hatch, E. Dan, Petalochilus  Rog. and the New Zealand forms of Caladenia R.Br.
2. Trans.Roy.Soc.N.Z. 1949.  77:398-402