Diversity of orchid species in Liwa Botanic Gardens and their utilization by the community

Abstract

Liwa Botanical Gardens located on the back of the Bukit Barisan Selatan Mountains is an ex situ conservation area which represents the flora of Southern Sumatra with a focus on conservation of Indonesian ornamental plants, including orchids.To update the data of diversity of orchids species in Liwa Botanical Garden and its utilization by the community, the research was conducted by re-inventing all of orchid species, validating their names and grouping them into family, genus and species. Their conservation status and use by the community were recorded from the references. The results show that the Liwa Botanical Gardens has 986 orchid specimens consisting of 53 genera, 96 species and 366 unidentified spesimen. Dendrobium has the largest specimen number with a total of 74 specimens. There are 2 species of orchids with protected conservation status in Indonesia, namely Gramathophyllum speciosum and Vanda sumatrana; and 2 species included in the IUCN red list, namely Coelogyne foestermanii with the least concern category and Paphiopedillum tonsum in the endangered category. The existence of the orchid collection in the Liwa Botanical Gardens has been used by the community for education, research and tourism.