REPORT ON TOM MIRENDA LECTURE TOUR – Project 362.24

An orchid grower himself since 1980, Tom Mirenda was the Smithsonian Gardens’ orchid collection specialist for more than 18 years. Along with his duties maintaining and curating the Smithsonian’s collection of 9,000 orchids, Tom helped to develop educational displays for Smithsonian Garden exhibits visited by hundreds of thousands of museum patrons. He frequently travels around the U.S. and internationally, giving talks and presentations to scientists as well as the general public about orchid ecology, pollination biology, and strategies for orchid conservation.

For the past 18 years, Tom has written two monthly columns (Tom’s Monthly Checklist and Genus of the Month) for ORCHIDS magazine and in 2017, along with two scientists from Kew, published The Book of Orchids for the University of Chicago Press which contains very intriguing and unusual information on about 600 orchid species.

He is currently the Director of Horticulture Education and Outreach for the Hawaii Tropical Botanical Garden.

At the WOC in Tainan, I found out that he was planning to visit Perth for the 8^th International Orchid Conservation Congress. I asked him whether he would be interested in doing a lecture tour with me to various orchid societies to help promote the AOF and provide interesting talks to various societies. He agreed to the proposal.

Following his arrival in Melbourne, the first point of call was to visit several orchid growers in Melbourne before driving to Anglesea to see orchids in situ. Margaret MacDonald was a wonderful host for the day and ensured we saw most of the different species in bloom that week. This was followed by a talk to the Geelong Orchid & Indoor Plant Society and ANOS Geelong members. The topic of Tom’s talk was “African Adventure”.

Returning to Melbourne, Tom gave a talk to the Orchid Species Society of Victoria and ANOS Vic members, the topic being “Orchid Hunting in Central America”. This presentation was recorded for use by other orchid societies in Melbourne at a future date.

The next day we flew to Perth where we presented to a combined meeting of the WA Native Orchid Study & Conservation Group and the Orchid Society of Western Australia. The topic was “The Big Island Orchid Scene: Amazing Gardens, Nurseries and People of Hawaii’s Orchid Island”.

Tom Mirenda, Helen Richards, Wendy Probert and I gave presentations at the IOCC. This was followed by a quick trip to the Stirling Ranges to meet up with Terry Dunham, a local expert based in Albany, who took us to see many orchids in bloom including the wonderful “Queen of Sheeba”, Thelymitra speciosa.

 On our return to Melbourne, Tom and I drove to Sale to give a talk to a combined meeting of the Sale and Bairnsdale Orchid Societies plus employees and volunteers of the Sale Botanic Gardens. The topic of the talk again, “The Big Island Orchid Scene: Amazing Gardens, Nurseries and People of Hawaii’s Orchid Island”.

A visit was paid to Jeanne and Ian Dunn’s property to see orchids in situ and to visit their orchid houses.

We then headed up the coast to Mallacoota, where we met up with Gary and Judy Backhouse. Gary took us to see more orchids in situ, some of them quite rare with less than 100 known plants in the wild.

We then headed to Pambula where we were supposed to give a talk to the Saphire Coast Orchid Society and meet up with David Jones. Unfortunately, due to a mix-up in times we arrived too late and missed David as he had to get home early afternoon.

The following day we travelled to Canberra via Cooma and saw Dendrobium speciosum growing in situ on large rocks.

On the first day in Canberra, we met up with Mark Clements and Anne Mackenzie, visited Mark’s collection and then were taken by Mark see orchids in situ, again some quite rare.

The following day we had lunch with Mark and Heidi Zimmer before Heidi took us to the CSIRO offices to see, amongst other things, the floral dissection cards which are being digitised with help from an AOF grant (Project: 350/2023). The previous day Mark had given us a demonstration of how a flower is dissected and mounted on a card.

Heidi then took us to visit the orchid collection held at the Australian National Botanic Gardens and to meet the botanists working there.

Unfortunately, we could not give talks at Canberra as our travel dates were too close to their Spring Show for them to be able to organise.

Our planned trip to give talks at the Illawarra District Orchid Society on the way to Sydney fell through as they had not given their members enough notice to organise the meeting.

I dropped Tom off at Sydney Airport and after a night in Sydney, drove back to Melbourne.

The lecture tour met our objectives of bringing an International Speaker to talk to various orchid societies, and to promote the AOF.

Several lessons were learnt in arranging the lecture tour which will be implemented when next the AOF identifies a suitable international speaker to visit Australia.

John Varigos
Co-Chairman