"The new orchid was first spotted... in 2004... But experts were unable to identify the flower... in late November a team of botanists found about 40 of the orchids on the mountain.
"It was an arduous climb, straight up," said Tessa Oliver, a botanist from the University of Western Cape. ... Oliver said most orchids in South Africa flower in the first year after a fire and there can be gaps of 20 years between sightings. "But this one is special because it doesn't need fire. It is just growing there," she said. The tiny white flower with purple specks on its inside is only about one centimetre wide and the entire plant stands between 10 and 30cm tall. ... It is being named Disa linderiana in honour of Professor Peter Linder, formerly of the University of Cape Town, a renowned orchid expert who is now in Zurich, Switzerland. Oliver said orchids... South Africa has a couple of hundred different kinds. ... The Cape falls into a unique floral region known as the fynbos biome after the small fine-leaved flowers found there. The biome has been declared a World Heritage Site and is the smallest and the most threatened in the world with over 9 000 species. Yet it still delivers new plants for botanists to discover, many of which have been made by Oliver and her family of orchid experts. ... Oliver said the plant would now be studied and the results published in the South African Journal of Botany. She said... it was unclear why this species had taken root in the high slopes of the mountain." article URL : http://www.news24.com/News24/Technology/News/0,9294,2-13-1443_2047366,00.html photo : [caption : ... undated photograph of a Disa linderiana] http://www.news24.com/Images/Photos/20061221065918orchid.jpg] **************** "CapeNature field ranger Jacques van Rooi was on a routine patrol with colleagues in the Cederberg when he spotted a flower he did not recognise. Now, two years later, botanists agree that Van Rooi had stumbled across a new species of orchid. "It was pure coincidence that I found it," Van Rooi said... In November 2004, he and colleagues Jonah Zimri and Nicolaas Hanekom had been patrolling the slopes of the upper Sneeuberg, the highest peak in the Cederberg... "I saw this plant, and it was unknown to me. It had white flowers and sort of reddish leaves. I had my camera with me, so took a photograph of it and then showed my manager," Van Rooi said. When the manager couldn't identify it either, they emailed the photograph to various people, none of whom could identify it. A few months ago, the photograph was sent to Tessa Oliver of the University of the Western Cape's department of biodiversity and conservation biology. Oliver recognised it as an orchid, but, unable to pinpoint which one, sent it to several orchid specialists, who also did not know the flower. There was quite a bit of correspondence between the specialists and the CapeNature staff. When the plant's flowering time approached last month, Van Rooi again climbed up Sneeuberg to the spot where he had seen the flower a year before. Sure enough, he found several of the plants, which |he again photographed and |e-mailed to botanists. The feedback was that it was probably a new species of disa." article URL : http://www.int.iol.co.za/index.php?from=rss_South%20Africa&set_id=1&click_id=13&art_id=vn20061221063100524C621840 ********** Regards, VB _______________________________________________ the OrchidGuide Digest (OGD) [email protected] http://orchidguide.com/mailman/listinfo/orchids_orchidguide.com
