Volunteers help save Australia’s endangered rosella spider orchid

Melbourne: The endangered rosella spider orchid, one of Australia’s most threatened flowers, is being brought back from the brink by volunteers and scientists at the Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria.

In 2000, just 120 wild plants were recorded across four small sites in New South Wales and Victoria. By 2023, the number had grown five-fold, but the species remains at risk from wildfires.

The Gardens’ orchid conservation team now has over 500 rosella spider orchids in propagation — twice the estimated wild population when the project started — ready for reintroduction.

The orchid is difficult to propagate as it depends on a specific fungus to germinate and relies on a single native bee species, Leioproctus platycephalus, for pollination. It flowers with a single purple bloom between August and September.”It will be another year until they’re ready to be put into soil,” research scientist Alex McLachlan told ABC News, describing three years of lab work growing seedlings in petri dishes and flasks.

In July, volunteers planted the lab-grown orchids at a secret site where the pollinator bee is known to live, with protective cages over them.

McLachlan said the Gardens has about 500 species in propagation, including eight threatened species set to be returned to the wild this year.