THE ORCHIDS of NORTH QUEENSLAND 
In the happy days of peace the scrubs and forests of North Queensland provided 
a happy hunting ground for the orchid collector, but in these times of war, with 
their stresses and strains, few have the time and none have the means at their 
disposal to pursue an orchid hunt. During the last eighteen months, the greater 
part of my time has been spent in North Queensland in a series of hectic visits, 
and on none of these occasions have I found time even to visit the collections of 
orchid cultivators or to spend an hour in the quest of plants, although I have 
on many occasions passed through the known habitats of some of our grandest 
species. 
But although the war has robbed many of us of much of .our time usually 
devoted to the growing of orchids, I am of the opinion that, as is so often the 
case, out of the evil of war will come good. The virile, fertile, tropical jungles 
and forests of Cape York Peninsula have never been efficiently and completely 
prospected for the discovery of new orchids. For one reason, transport has been 
exceptionally difficult, and the greater part of the Peninsula has been possible of 
traverse only by means of pack-horse, and, even then, only in certain of the more 
sparsely timbered areas. The exigencies of war, however, have made necessary 
the construction of roads through the densest jungles, and, although the hungry 
jungle will creep over these tracks again, it will always be possible to find a 
pathway through them. These Peninsular jungles hold much hope of the discovery 
of hitherto unknown orchid treasures and, if, in the grand new world, finance 
is available for the quest of such unmercenary things as orchids, I venture my 
reputation as a prophet to forecast that many new species of the order will be 
found. 
New Guinea is rich in orchids and as scientists of various kinds have drawn 
analogies between the flora and fauna of the two places and, from the evidence 
available, have argued that Australia and New Guinea were once joined together, 
it is more than probable that an intensive search of the Peninsular jungles will 
disclose species closely akin to those of the Papuan jungles. 
One genus which I have always felt would be found in North Queensland is the 
Cypripedium. Papua is rich in slipper orchids, and I feel certain that somewhere 
in Cape York Peninsula there will be found some native species. We have one 
member of the tribe already reported, Apostasia stylidoides (Reichenbach), a 
humble, grasslike plant, found in the Rockingham Bay area. 
But whatever the future may hold for us we have some known orchids in North 
Queensland which can hold their own in any collection. Indeed, I would say that 
a person could form quite a satisfactory collection of plants of horticultural 
value consisting of North Queensland orchids alone. 
In this paper I propose dealing only with those orchids which lend themselves 
to culture from a horticultural viewpoint and will not touch upon the vast 
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