Orchid Council Executive for 2022
President – Glenys MacRae; Vice-president – Allan Rae; Secretary – Bryan Sutherland; Treasurer – Chris Hubbert. Executive Committee – Gillian Lyster, Toby Marris, Penny Moore, Sandra Simpson, Keith Smart.
Show Dates
Just a reminder to check the website for show dates as there are a few shows coming up in July.
Orchid Request
We have received a request from the family of Frank Askin regarding whether anyone still had one of his orchids in their collection. The orchid is Paph. delenatii ‘Louise’, pictured below. The family donated quite a few orchids from his collection to the Wellington Orchid Society when his wife Joyce died in the 1990s.
New Zealand’s Missing Orchid Species – Update
Earlier in the year Glenys MacRae wrote the article ‘ New Zealand’s Missing Orchid Species’ for Orchids 2022. In the time since the article was written Landcare Research has made some changes to their database. The article talks about some orchid names being added to the Landcare Research Plant Name Database, that database has recently been decommissioned with the new platform called Biota of New Zealand.
This database gives names and classification of bacteria, fungi, land invertebrates and plants. To search a species enter the genus, for example, Masdevallia. A list of all the Masdevallia in the database will come up. Masdevallia picea was a species added earlier this year, if you click on that you will see that the Biostatus source is MacRae G (2022). When you click on source, the full citation will come up as MacRae, G. 2022: Orchid Council of New Zealand (OCNZ) checklist of exotic orchid species in New Zealand (unpub.)
Glenys also reports that at the recent project governance meeting, project leader, Murray Dawson, reported that he has a contract from MPI to ‘audit’ the Plant Biosecurity Index during June 2022. This involves checking some 30,000 names to identify any errors, and to state if the species are native or exotic. This is good news as there are a number of spelling errors on the PBI affecting orchids, as well as other taxa which Murray will address.