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Bruce Irwin - Botanical Illustrator  Life well spent among native orchids Bruce Irwin, who has died in Tauranga at 90, was regarded as one of this country's greatest botanical illustrators of native orchids and had the honour of having two named for him. Modest man that he was, he had mixed feelings about the naming of Pterostylis irwinii and Pterostylis irsoniana, saying it wasn't quite the "done thing". He discovered several species himself. The fourth of five children, Bruce was born in Wanganui, where his Irish father, Sam, was a men's outfitter and tailor. As a young teenager, Bruce liked nothing better than to head off on his bicycle looking for native orchids to draw, something that was to become a life-long and all-consuming "hobby" that included almost 12 years' labour on The Oxford Book of New Zealand Plants, still considered a landmark publication 34 years later. After leaving Wanganui Technical College, Bruce trained as a draughtsman with the Department of Lands and Survey in New Plymouth and relished the proximity of Mt Taranaki and its native orchids. He was called up for pilot training late in World War II, going on to serve in Japan with J Force after the war. After a stint with Lands and Survey in Wellington, in 1962 Bruce bought a holiday camp in the Marlborough Sounds and it was there that he met renowned botanist Lucy Moore, who gave him a microscope. "I could see the detail of the plant and understand how it worked," he recalled in 2008. In 1967, Bruce became artist-in charge of the art department at Otago University's medical school, a job he described as "the best in the world because I could get into the hills for days at a time", thus allowing him to work on The Oxford Book of New Zealand Plants. A life member of the NZ Native Orchid Group, Bruce moved to Tauranga in 1981, joining the Tauranga Orchid Society and helping plant cymbidium orchids at Te Puna Quarry Park. In 2000, Bruce was awarded the Allan Mere by the New Zealand Botanical Society, presented to an "outstanding botanist" and, in 2007, a coffee-table book, Bruce Irwin's Drawings of New Zealand Orchids, was published by the Native Orchid Group. Bruce is survived by a son, daughter and five grand-daughters. The Third Edition of the Colour Field Guide is now available 4th September 2011 The 3rd edition of Eric Scanlen's Colour Field Guide is now available for only $20. The Field Guide contains all the named and un-named native orchid species so far identified. To order your copy please see our Publications page. NAME CHANGES (2011) Caladenia reinstated In 2004 the New Zealand species of Caladenia were split into two separate genera... Petalochilus and Stegostyla. This decision has now been reversed... so we're back to just Caladenia again!
Linguella and Diplodium do not warrant separate genera, so Linguella has been discontinued. The names on this website have been updated to reflect these changes. Taeniophyllum norfolkianum - A Norfolk Island species found in NZ (Excerpt from NZ Native Orchid Journal 118) Ursula Brandes recently found a "new" species of epiphytic orchid growing on gorse (Ulex europaeus) The species is thought to be Taeniophyllum norfolkianum, previously known only from Norfolk Island, where it occurs on the undersides of Araucaria branches on the slopes of Mt Bates. Taeniophyllum norfolkianum is a very small plant. The roots are only about 1mm diameter; we observed plants with roots up to 25mm long, radiating out to form patches 3-5cm across. The flowers, 4-6 per cluster, are 7-10 mm long, tubular, and yellow-green. We found about 140 Taeniophyllum norfolkianum plants growing on four gorse shrubs in a mosaic of mixed secondary indigenous forest and shrubland, and gorse scrub and shrubland. The open mixed scrub comprised tree ferns (mamaku, Cyathea medullaris) and silver fern (Cyathea dealbata), kanuka (Kunzea sp.), mahoe (Melicytus ramiflorus subsp. ramiflorus), gorse (Ulex europaeus) and pate (Schefflera digitata), with scattered mapou (Myrsine australis) and kahikatea (Dacrycarpus dacrydioides). The T. norfolkianum plants were growing on branches and stems in the gorse canopy open to the light. One plant was observed epiphytic on another gorse plant on a pasture margin, about 70m from the main site. The plants were flowering and fruiting when observed in November 2009 and it appeared that some plants were at least two years old because we observed the remains of the previous year's flower stalks as well as 2009 flower stalks on some of the plants. The currently known population may not be the only occurrence of this species at this site because there are large amounts of suitable habitat and many host plants. For more Information see: http://www.nzpcn.org.nz/flora_details.asp?ID=6662
OBITUARY: Edwin Daniel Hatch FLS 1919 - 2008 Dan Hatch died in his 90th year, on 4 November after a short illness. He had been intellectually able and contributing to debate about native orchids until shortly before his death. Dan Hatch is one of the great contributors to our knowledge of New Zealand orchids. His father's family moved to the native bush at Laingholm, on the Manukau coast at the foot of the Waitakeres, soon after their arrival in New Zealand in 1922 and Dan Hatch lived there all his life. He grew up with botany, and botanised from age fourteen. During the 1939-45 War Dan Hatch was posted to Waiouru. Nearby he found seven orchids not listed in Cheeseman's Manual of the NZ Flora. He sent them to the Botany Division of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, but at this time Botany Division was not working on orchids. He wrote nineteen orchid papers for the Transactions of the Royal Society of New Zealand from 1945 to 1963 - among over a hundred published botanical papers. His father, the senior E.D. Hatch (a domestic architect of the Arts & Crafts movement), drew most of the orchids for the T.R.S.N.Z. papers, but Dan Hatch did his own illustrations for his booklet Auckland's orchids, and for his papers on the leafless spider orchid Corybas (Molloybas) cryptanthus, and on the equally strange leafless Yoania (Danhatchia) australis. He was honoured by the generic name Danhatchia (Garay & Christensen), and in the specific epithet of Thelymitra hatchii (Moore). He was made a Fellow of the Linnaean Society. Dan Hatch was the quintessential amateur botanist: an expert in a narrow field at a time when professionals were simply not interested, or had more pressing work. NAME CHANGES (2007): NZNOG ACCEPTS NAME CHANGES: ( October 2008 ) The publication last December of Dawson, Molloy and Beuzenberg's paper on the chromosomes of Their studies gave, for example, more support to splitting Caladenia and Pterostylis into new genera (changes we had instinctively not liked), than to splitting Adelopetalum and Ichthyostomum from Bulbophyllum (changes we had already accepted). It is therefore logical now to accept most of the changes proposed by Mark Clements, David Jones, Pterostylis alveata is now Diplodium alveatum Pterostylis brumalis is now Diplodium brumale Pterostylis trullifolia is now Diplodium trullifolium Pterostylis tanypoda is now Hymenochilus tanypodus Pterostylis tristis is now Hymenochilus tristis Pterostylis tasmanica is now Plumatichilos tasmanicum Chiloglottis cornuta is now Simpliglottis cornuta Chiloglottis valida is now Simpliglottis valida Chiloglottis trapeziformis is now Myrmechila trapeziformis Paracaleana minor is now Sullivania minor Cyrtostylis reniformis is now Cyrtostylis rotundifolia
Nematoceras macrantha becomes Nematoceras macranthum NEW ORCHID NAME: PRASOPHYLLUM HECTORII The orchid tagged "Prasophyllum aff patens" for many years has now been officially named as Prasophyllum hectorii (Molloy, D.L.Jones & M.A.Clem. Orchadian 15: 41 (2005)).
27th February 2004
Two Czech men were today fined $7500 each for trying to smuggle native orchid plants out of New Zealand. Cardiologist Cestmir Cihalik, 54, and Jindrich Smitak, 60, a Czech government environmental protection agency inspector, were sentenced in Manukau District Court in what has been described as the first prosecution of its kind in New Zealand. The men were arrested by the Wildlife Enforcement Group, a unit made up of Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, Customs and Department of Conservation staff, at Auckland Airport on January 18 as they were about to leave New Zealand. Smitak also admitted three other charges of taking native plants without authority from Nelson Lakes National Park, Mt Aspiring National Park and Fiordland National Park. The men arrived in New Zealand late in December and travelled the country's North and South Island in a rental car before they were arrested.
The court was told earlier they visited New Zealand "to undertake a carefully planned plant collecting expedition". Cihalik had 40 individual plants
comprising 15 native orchid species in his luggage. All were plants subject to the Trade in Endangered Species Act and the National Parks Act.
Smitak had 18 species of native orchid, comprising 43 individual plants, in his luggage. He took 36 specimens of native plants from national parks.
Pterostylis silvicultrix is the new name for the orchid we have called Pterostylis banksii var. silvicultrix - Pterostylis auriculata is now the official name for the Greenhood which had been tag-named Pterostylis "catlins" - a Greenhood from the South Island.
ACCEPTED NAME CHANGES TO SOME SPECIES OF NZ ORCHID ARE AS FOLLOWS:
In September 2001 the Australian orchid Myrmechila trapeziformis was found growing beneath Specimens
have been transplanted into the Native Orchid Reserve near Taupo where they are This species is obviously a Trans-Tasman vagrant, so we will need to be on the lookout for any |
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