Durban -
University of KwaZulu-Natal botanists and orchid experts, Professor Steve Johnson and Dr Benny Bytebier have just released a new book.
It is the first complete field guide to local orchids to be published in more than 30 years, and covers almost 500 orchid species of the region, including Lesotho and Swaziland.
The authors behind Orchids of South Africa - A Field Guide, are both from the School of Life Sciences in Pietermaritzburg.
Johnson holds the South African Research chair in Evolutionary Biology and is a leading international expert in the field of plant pollination biology, and Bytebier is curator of the Bews Herbarium, based on the Pietermaritzburg campus. His research focuses on the systematics, biogeography and evolutionary history of African orchids.
The new book showcases extraordinary photographs by the renowned Austrian photographer Herbert Starker, who with his wife, Helga, has traversed the region since 2006, driving some 370 000km to capture orchids in their natural habitat.
The book, published by Struik Nature (R350), covers the more common orchids to the extremely rare, “from the less remarkable to the brazenly beautiful”.