In October 2023 a new orchid was discovered on Lord Howe Island, by Reece Taverner. This was the Yellow-flowered King of the Fairies Oberonia complanata.
This is a small orchid which grows on trees or rocks. Each plant has one to many shoots in a tight, iris-like clump, with 3 to 8 leaves per shoot. The leaves are spear-shaped, 3-15 cm long, 10-15 mm wide, and yellow-green in colour and somewhat fleshy (as water storage). The plants produce about 150 to 300 tiny cream to yellowish flowers, crowded on erect to drooping stems up to 15 cm long, in spring and summer.
Oberonia is a large genus of 150 or more species, from East Africa to Samoa, and from northern India to Australia, but especially in tropical Asia. This species is also on the North coast of NSW where it is rare.
Renowned English botanist and orchidologist John Lindley described the genus Oberonia in 1830. It was named after Oberon (prince of fairies) in William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
‘As Oberon, that little King of the Dryads, prince of the northern hobgoblins, rides about on the branches of the trees, hiding his many-formed countenance amongst the leaves, so our little herbs, not less changeable in form, lurk in the forests of India and ride triumphantly in their leafy chariot’.