Orchids of the Solomon Islands

Abstract

This paper deals very much with generalizations rather than statistically usable facts. The science of orchidology has never attracted many workers, never as many as, say, the fungi or the grasses or the ferns. The orchidologists there are and have been and probably will be are mostly involved with describing new species and relegating to synonymy those species described by their past and present colleagues! There has been very, very little geographical and phylogenetic speculation in the orchids by orchidologists and in our present state of incomplete knowledge, generalizations are all that can be aimed for. Altogether 350 gatherings of orchids were made during the Expedition and most of these are represented by dried, i.e. pressed, herbarium specimens. For the information of nonbotanists, as with the herbarium specimens of other plant families, the great majority of orchids had more than one specimen collected, and the duplicates have been distributed to Herbaria in all parts of the world. In fact at least 17 Herbaria have received some specimens of orchids collected on the Expedition. The usual policy is to distribute only those that are fully identified—otherwise somebody may describe it as new! The great majority of the 350 collected were also preserved in liquid, either as whole plants if these were very small or a sample of the flowers of the larger species. In addition, 130 living plants were sent back to Kew for cultivation such as Sarcochilus moorei , which has such a short flowering period, the flowering probably being brought on by a sudden drop in temperature as has been recorded in some Malayan species. About half of these are represented by pressed specimens made at the time of collection, but the remainder were collected only as living plants as they were not flowering at the time. As they flower at Kew they are identified and specimens made. Many have also been photographed and several painted by the official Kew artist for the collection of orchid drawings housed at Kew.