Oceania Orchids
Darryl and Alison Smedley

Miniature Orchids of Australia

By Darryl Smedley dsmedley@ozemail.com.au

The title of this paper is Miniature Orchids of Australia. Two things need to be clarified before we can go any further. The first is that I’ll confine the discussion to epiphytic and lythophytic species (hereinafter just called epiphytes). The second is more crucial in that we need to determine a reasonable definition of what qualifies an orchid as a miniature species.

There is a book on miniature orchids, that of Rebecca T. Northen entitled, amazingly, Miniature Orchids, and published in the USA in 1980. She has a fairly simple definition of a miniature orchid, "those ranging in height from 1/2 inch to 6 inches (1 to 5cm)". This definition focuses on the vegetative characteristics of the orchid. For the purposes of this paper I’ll side-step this definition for the moment.

The Orchid Society of New South Wales has defined for judging purposes, a miniature orchid as one where the individual flower is less that 15mm across the flower’s widest part. I imagine the other Australian Orchid Council affiliated state societies would have similar definitions. ANOS has not defined what constitutes a miniature in terms of our native orchids but has introduced a quality award, the Award of Botanical Excellence, for our smaller species

A few years ago, the ANOS Judging Panel (then only operational in NSW) completely reviewed the ANOS Judging Standards and award criteria and published the first ANOS Judging Handbook (ANOS 1993). The Panel appreciated that although miniatures, or botanical species as they are sometimes called, where as worthy of gaining a quality award (HCC, AM or FCC) as any other species, they were unlikely to receive same. Because of their size, the full range of judging standards were difficult or impossible to apply, especially size, shape, habit of inflorescence and, to a lesser extent, colour. The simple fact is that, because of the small size of their flowers, there is little potential for difference from clone to clone within small-flowered species. However, from time to time, clones come along that are obviously superior to their cohorts and warrant proper recognition of their quality.

The solution was to introduce a new award, the Award of Botanical Excellence. As the judging standard explains, the exhibit should not be assessed strictly in terms of the criteria applying to the other quality awards, but generally assessed within these criteria where appropriate. An overall evaluation out of 100 points will be given by the judges. An exhibit must receive an averaged minimum of 75 points or more for the award to be granted.

The Panel recognised that it may be difficult to differentiate absolutely between miniature or botanical species and the other, so-called, ‘horticultural species’. It noted that it may be necessary to maintain a list of species eligible for an ABE but no such list has been created to date. As a guide though, two clones of Dendrobium schneiderae var. major have been awarded HCC’s. This taxon’s flowers are about 8mm across so this may be about as small as you can go where differences in size and shape can be easily assessed and readily pointed up to the ANOS Judging Standard for Australian Native Species.

In the absence of any established definition in this country for miniature orchids, I feel entitled, for the purposes of this paper, to arrive at my own criterion for defining such species.

I don’t think that using vegetative characteristics are really satisfactory. For example, Northen (loc. cit.) under her definition, includes 27 Australian taxa in her catalogue of representative miniature species. There could be no argument that some of them, e.g. Papillilabium beckleri, Oberonia titania and Drymoanthus minutus would fit any definition of a miniature orchid. I’d be hard-pressed to concede, however, that D. tetragonum, D. schoeninum, Sarcochilus hartmannii or Bulbophyllum gracillimum for examples of other taxa in the book, would fit any definition of a miniature orchid.

Anybody who has seen the massive specimens of D. schoeninum wrapped around the upper limbs of the giant River Oaks Casuarina cunninghamiana in the Barrington area of NSW would guffaw at the thought of it being a miniature species. To be fair to Northen, perhaps she only had a little piece.

Considering all of the above, I think I’ll go for size of the flower for my definition. There seems to be no reason to be hard and fast about dimensions but I’ll settle on species with flowers with overall dimensions of about 10mm, more or less, for this report.

Having now determined how to separate miniature species, which ones are they? Using as a base the floral measurements in Australian Indigenous Orchids (Dockrill 1992), 73 of our native epiphytic species are miniatures. There are 166 non-terrestrial species in Australian Indigenous Orchids and another three (D. finniganense, D. brevicaudum and B. caldericola) described since its publication. Therefore, 43% of our epiphytic species are miniatures. Table 1 lists all such species that qualify as miniatures by my definition.

The flowers of Australian native orchid species are generally not as large or individually flamboyant as say, some Cattleya, Paphiopedilum or Phalaenopsis species. Notwithstanding this, they can be unsurpassed in mass display, e.g. a large clone of D. speciosum in full bloom is one of the most spectacular sights in the orchid world. The miniatures are no less magnificent but you have to take the time to properly inspect their flowers to fully appreciate their beauty and often extraordinary structure. Sometimes even a trusty hand-lens is not enough to properly inspect such minute structures and only the cleverest macrophotography will reveal their intricate beauty

When seen blown up on a full screen I think that B. bracteatum, in its variety of colour forms, is certainly one of this country’s most beautiful orchids. Conversely, hiding away amongst the miniatures is what I think must be Australia’s ugliest orchid Eria irukandjiana.

Some of this species are seen on the showbench from time to time and others hardly ever. The ANOS Judging Panels strive to give proper recognition to these species and I have no doubt that there will be occasions when some exhibits will rightfully bear champion ribbons won in open company.

Some species are very rare, in the wild and in collections e.g. Schoenorchis sarcophylla. Others are relatively easy to come by and a number of propagators are making the effort to produce these species in flask. Sarcochilus ceciliae is such an example. In a few generations it has been transformed by astute line-breeding from pale pink and rather cuppy, small 4-6mm diameter flowers into horticulturally-desirable plants bearing long inflorescences of wide and flat, rich deep pink flowers up to at least 16mm diameter.

I would urge all growers to take the time to become more closely aquainted with these miniature species and have a go at growing, flowering and exhibiting them. There really are some magnificent examples of Australia’s native orchid flora to be ‘discovered’ in their ranks.

I can’t finish this topic without visiting the debate that sometimes occurs amongst orchid growers as to which is the world’s smallest orchid. Two Australian species, B. globuliforme and B. minutissimum are often mentioned. If the criteria is the smallest inflorescence, these two species are certainly in the running as their peduncles and flowers are diminutive. If the criterion is vegetative character they are certainly winners as their pseudobulbs and leaves would barely scrape 3mm in height. If the criterion is flower size then Oberonia carnosa with a flower not making 1mm in any direction beats them both.

So then, Australia’s smallest species? I don’t know. It depends on how you assess it but its certainly one of the three above.

References

ANOS Inc. (1993). Judging Handbook. Australasian Native Orchid Society Inc. Sydney

Dockrill, A.W. (1992). Australian Indigenous Orchids Vols. 1 & 2. Surrey Beaty & Sons. Sydney

Northen, R.T. (1980). Miniature Orchids. Van Nostrand Reinhold Co. New York.

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Table 1: Miniature epiphytic species of Australia where individual flowers are ± less than 10mm in overall dimension.

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