Treasure hunt for rare orchid discovers thriving new cluster

Tucked under the canopy of subtropical rainforest in northern New South Wales exists a very rare orchid, which only emerges above ground to flower for a week or two each year.

The critically endangered Bonville leafless orchid was thought to exist in only one location in Australia, on the NSW Mid North Coast, and is found nowhere else in the world.

Recently, teacher and botany enthusiast Nick Lambert went on a mission to try and find more of the orchids.

To the amazement of scientists, he discovered a second cluster near Boambee, about 5 kilometres away from the original site.

"I went to a rainforest near Boambee in the foothills of the mountains and managed to find another population of them, around 50 or so, and that was pretty awesome actually,"

he said.

Mr Lambert is friends with botanist Lachlan Copeland, after whom the orchid — officially named Danhatchia copelandii — was named following his discovery of the species on the property where he was living in 2018.

Last month, on October 22, Mr Lambert went with Dr Copeland to see the orchids while they were visible and flowering and it inspired him to go searching.

"The next day I was feeling adventurous, and thought, 'I am going to check out some spots and see if I can spot some more,'" Mr Lambert said.

Finding more of the "cryptic" orchid was not an easy task.

It blends with the rainforest floor, has no leaves — and therefore no photosynthesis — and gets its nutrients solely from a fungus beneath the soil.

"It's a tiny little thing, about 10 centimetres tall, reddish and hairy and has these tiny little flowers that open up," Mr Lambert said. 

"It's pretty special because you can't see it anywhere else in the world."

Dr Copeland went to inspect the newly discovered orchids the next day, thrilled to confirm the finding.

He said he had shown the original orchid site to about 30 botanists over the years, who had all "tried and failed" to find the species at other locations.

"And then Nick rocks up and finds a much bigger and better population in all respects, so he showed us all up, much to his credit," he said.

Dr Copeland said the finding added considerably to the existing known population.

He said in recent years he had seen only six to seven plants at the site at Bonville, and this spring had recorded 17 plants.

"Now we have [more than] 60 plants known altogether; that's infinitely better than what we had last year when I counted about six,"

he said.

"I've surveyed it quite thoroughly every spring, with the most plants seen being 43 and the least about four. It's only visible for a few weeks each year."

New hope for species

Dr Copeland said the new site would become part of the protected new Great Koala National Park, which was "great news" for the survival of the orchid species.

"So, by chance they are conserved, and by chance that area has escaped historical logging,"

he said.

The chief scientist at the Botanic Gardens of Sydney Brett Summerell said the finding was "very significant".

"One of the issues we have to deal with, with threatened species, is often they have really small populations and really low genetic diversity," he said.

"Finding another population of a significant number of individuals really provides the potential for the genetic diversity.

"Also, if something happens in one location, we now have another back-up location."

Professor Summerell said the Bonville leafless orchid was one of only a relatively small number of leafless orchid species that relied on nutrients from an underground fungus, which lived on the plant's roots.

He said the growing conditions could not be simulated outside the wild.

"They are impossible to cultivate in propagation, we can't do that at the Botanic Gardens, so we are really dependent on making sure those populations in the ground are viable," he said.

"By protecting them we are protecting the whole biodiversity in that space … there's a whole connection with a range of different creatures … it's a whole web of life."

Professor Summerell said a specimen would be held at the National Herbarium of NSW at Mount Annan, in Sydney's south west.

"Lachlan Copeland … is an extraordinarily gifted botanist so we don’t have any doubt about the identity, but it will be officially identified through that process and incorporated into the herbarium collection," he said.