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New Orchid Find:
Prasophyllum sp aff Correctum
It’s not often a new terrestrial orchid is found in Victoria. These days a
lot of new orchids are identified in the laboratory by botanists splitting
hairs, or so it seems. However, a new Prasophyllum has been found this
month, November, 2007 in our area. When you look at it is so different
that it is easy to accept the term – new orchid. The orchid was found by
staff of the DSE (Andrew Pritchard & Kate Vleck) while searching for the
Matted Flax-lilly in a grassland area near Mortlake.
The area of some 700 hectares is a good grasslands area which has been
only lightly grassed by cattle every few years over the last decade or 2.
There are no vehicular tracks within the grassland. Amazingly the area is
only a few kilometers from the Mortlake Township.
Coincidently just as Andrew was looking at the new orchid in flower, I was
chatting to him about my own find, but his excitement was very evident and
infectious and we soon found ourselves meeting at the area with Kate to
take some photographs and check out this new orchid. Initially the orchid
colony was thought to be around one hectare with a hundred or so plants.
On our way out a few more orchids were found and with further
investigation it was concluded there were closer to 1000 perhaps even 2000
plants over many hectares.
Samples sent for identification have confirmed the orchid is new and
similar to Prasophyllum correctum from the Gippsland area. Plants vary in
colour from green to brownish with overtones of pink and purple. They grow
to 40cm tall with up to 50 widely opening flowers.
Due to the significance of the find, ANOS was asked to help in searching
the entire 700 hectare site. This search was conducted a few days later on
the 17th November by over a dozen members. It was a hot day with rain
threatening (a few minutes of rain actually did occur) and the flies were
out in force to help us along. The orchids stood out and as the day
proceeded it was seen that they preferred the lower, wetter areas and that
the orchids covered most of the grasslands area. We also saw the
Prasophyllum viretrum together with thousands of Microtis, hundreds of
Thelymitra basaltica and some Thelymitra peniculata. At the close of the
search the population was thought to be around 8 to 10 thousand plants.
There is a lot of work to do for this new orchid; its life will never be
the same now that we have found it! But we must ask, what else grows
there?
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