Publications

Magazine Intro
Index Search

2008

2007

2006

2005

2004

2003

2002

2001

2000

1999

1998

1997

1996

Orchids are everywhere

[Only the first part of this story is reprinted here.]

New Zealand has more than 120 native orchids, "all beautiful", according to Ian St George.  Illustrations by Ian St George.

Wild native orchids are common plants in New Zealand if you know what to look for. Far from being flowers of the tropical jungle, most orchids originate in temperate zones and New Zealand has more than 120 species.

While a few are rare, many are in some places as common as grass. True, most of the native orchids are not brightly coloured, nor do they generally have a strong fragrance to attract insect pollinators (uniquely, two thirds of our orchids are self-pollinating), but their beauty takes your breath away.

Orchids are everywhere. They occupy just about every habitat in New Zealand from brackish estuarine swamps to alpine herbfields. In between, they may be found in front lawns and dark forests, on tree trunks, road verges, rocky outcrops, scrubby hillsides, and dry banks along bush tracks. Orchids may take root on traffic islands in cities, in the spray zones of waterfalls, on moss hummocks, or in exotic pine forests. There are more than 40 species in the far south, even more in the far north, and everywhere between. Stewart Island alone has dozens.

Identifying orchids is probably harder than finding them but knowing what to look out for helps sort them from other small plants. Their shapes vary from the tiny ground-hugging spider orchids, to more familiar sprays which hang from forest trees, and the upright, flowering stalks of the grass orchids. What they all have in common is the unique structure of the orchid flower.

Orchids have evolved from lilies, which have three petals and three sepals of the same shape, surrounding six stamens (male parts) and three stigmas (female parts). In orchids, at some inspired evolutionary moment, the male and female parts joined into one central floral structure called the column. The three sepals and three petals surround this single column.

Furthermore, in orchids the petals and sepals are often different from each other, with one sepal forming the hood protecting the flower, and one petal, the lip, which, especially in exotic orchids, is often curiously coloured and shaped to lure insects. The pioneer botanical writers, Laing and Blackwell, thought their variety looked like ‘swans, pelicans, the skin of the tiger and of the leopard, the eyes and teeth of the lynx, the face of the bull, the grin of the monkey, the head of the serpent, the tail of the rattlesnake, frogs, lizards, even the head of the extinct Dinotherium’.

To be given a common name plants must be common (or if they are uncommon they have to be dangerous or delectable). Several of the New Zealand groups (genera) are common, and deservedly recognised with common names; in contrast, only a few individual species are. To study and discuss orchid species at anything more than the most superficial level, you simply have to learn the scientific names.

To view more stunning orchid images, you can purchase the author's book Nature Guide to the New Zealand Native Orchids, published by Random House.