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Despite the extensive journeys of explorers and plant hunters within Africa during Victorian times, African orchids never achieved the enormous popularity of those from the rainforests of the Americas and South-East Asia. The African tropics have an orchid flora of just 2500 species in total, and few of them are as stunning as those from other tropical areas. In contrast, the island of Madagascar has about 1000 different orchid species, many of them found wild nowhere else in the world. One of the most astonishing is the comet orchid (Angraecum sesquipedale), with its spur that reaches over 30 cm in length. Some of the earliest African orchids to be successfully cultivated in Europe came from the Cape region of South Africa. These were terrestrial species, which tend to predominate in temperate regions. The best known of these is the red-flowered ‘Pride of Table Mountain’, Disa uniflora, which grows in damp grassland or on stream banks. Kew has traditionally had a substantial number of African orchids in cultivation, reflecting its active research programme on the tropics of East and West Africa. As one element of Kew’s interest in studying and conserving the flora of Madagascar, an annotated checklist of the orchids of that island has recently been completed. Continuing work covers in-depth surveys of selected Madagascan orchid genera.
Gallery: Europe and Afro-Madagascar >>>
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