Jim Cootes | |
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 Jim Cootes | |
| Born | 17 June 1950 (age 73) |
| Occupation | research associate; mail carrier |
| Genre | Non-fiction |
Jim Cootes For more than twenty-five years, he has been studying Philippine orchids, particularly in the wild, as an amateur Orchidologist in Mindoro, Philippines. He is a frequent lecturer and has written numerous articles for major orchid journals and magazines. He resides in Australia, where he works as a mail carrier. [1]
Jim Cootes was born on 17 June 1950 in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
Cootes was a student of the Australian public school system until he finished high school in 1965. He then went to technical college part-time while he was training as an apprentice machinist. For the majority of his working life, (32 years) he was a civilian employee of the Royal Australian Navy. He now works as a postman for Australia Post, a job he has held for almost 13 years.
Cootes's early years was spent in suburban Sydney, near the Georges River, with his family. Much of this area was bushland and it had many native plants. His interest in orchids started when he was very young. When he was 12 years old, his family moved to a more urban area. Je remained interested in nature and orchids, but as he grew older, work began to take up more of his time and he could no longer spend as much time he once did looking at orchids in the wild.
In the late 1970s, Jim Cootes attended a combined Sydney Orchid Societies show. This started his interest in orchids again, and he went to a book shop in the mall and purchased a book about growing orchids.
In 1977 he made his first trip to the Philippines at the urging of his Filipino workmates. His first trip to the mountains of central Luzon was in 1979 and he was able to get a number of native orchid species, which he was able to import into Australia without any difficulty. The majority of these species could be identified but a few remained without names. He started to collect whatever literature he could find on Philippine orchid species, and in 1984 the most important book, at the time, on Philippine orchid species was published. These books, entitled Orchidiana Philippiniana, contained all the known orchid species in a large two-volume set.
Modern taxonomic works on Philippine orchid species are few and far between. Because of this, Cootes decided to create a database on Philippine orchid species. As the database grew he decided that a book could be made from the information that he had gathered. He started to seriously import Philippine orchid species, and his collection grew considerably.
Many of his plants remained unidentified and this got him interested in doing the descriptions himself. He purchased numerous books that explained the shapes of leaves, floral segments, and other characteristics. In 1998, he and his friend David Banks described and named Amesiella monticola. He did not name any more species for some considerable time. In fact it was not until 2007 that he co-authored another orchid species, Malleola eburnea, with a Filipino colleague, Wally Suarez. Since then they have named numerous species, and made many new taxonomic combinations.
The Orchids of the Philippines (2001) took Jim Cootes over ten years to write. He lived in the Philippines between 1997 and 2000 to do field work and further studies for the book. This book was finally published in 2001 and contained 338 species, all illustrated with colour images and a description of the plant and flower.
Jim Cootes continued to add species to the first book, and in 2011, with almost 800 species, Philippine Native Orchid Species was published. Again all the described species are illustrated with a colour image.
He has written countless articles over many years about orchids, particularly Asian orchids, and many on Philippine species.
Vanda, abbreviated in the horticultural trade as V., is a genus in the orchid family, Orchidaceae. There are about 87 species, and the genus is commonly cultivated for the marketplace. This genus and its allies are considered to be among the most specifically adapted of all orchids within the Orchidaceae. The genus is highly prized in horticulture for its showy, fragrant, long-lasting, and intensely colorful flowers. Vanda species are widespread across East Asia, Southeast Asia, and New Guinea, with a few species extending into Queensland and some of the islands of the western Pacific.
Robert Brown was a Scottish botanist and paleobotanist who made important contributions to botany largely through his pioneering use of the microscope. His contributions include one of the earliest detailed descriptions of the cell nucleus and cytoplasmic streaming; the observation of Brownian motion; early work on plant pollination and fertilisation, including being the first to recognise the fundamental difference between gymnosperms and angiosperms; and some of the earliest studies in palynology. He also made numerous contributions to plant taxonomy, notably erecting a number of plant families that are still accepted today; and numerous Australian plant genera and species, the fruit of his exploration of that continent with Matthew Flinders.
Dendrochilum is a genus of epiphytic, lithophytic and a few terrestrial flowering plants in the orchid family (Orchidaceae). The name of this genus is derived from Ancient Greek words dendron ("tree"), and either cheilos ("lip") or chilos, alluding to either the flowers' large lip or to their epiphytic growth. These orchids are popular among fans of non-traditional orchid curiosities.
Caladenia, commonly known as spider orchids, is a genus of 350 species of plants in the orchid family, Orchidaceae. Spider orchids are terrestrial herbs with a single hairy leaf and a hairy stem. The labellum is fringed or toothed in most species and there are small projections called calli on the labellum. The flowers have adaptations to attract particular species of insects for pollination. The genus is divided into three groups on the basis of flower shape, broadly, spider orchids, zebra orchids and cowslip orchids, although other common names are often used. Although they occur in other countries, most are Australian and 136 species occur in Western Australia, making it the most species-rich orchid genus in that state.
Thelymitra, commonly known as sun orchids, is a genus of more than 100 species of plants in the orchid family, Orchidaceae. Unlike most other orchids, sun orchids lack a highly modified labellum and all three petals are similar in size, shape and colour. The column is, however, highly modified and usually has prominent wings or glands which are helpful in identifying the species. Most sun orchids close their flowers at night, in cloudy or cool weather, giving rise to their common name. The scientific name means "woman's hood" and refers to the hooded column present in most, but not all species. Most species are endemic to Australia although some are found as far from there as the Philippines and Indonesia. The type species, Thelymitra longifolia, the first to be formally described, was collected in New Zealand.
Hugh Cuming was an English collector who was interested in natural history, particularly in conchology and botany. He has been described as the "Prince of Collectors".
Banksia ericifolia, the heath-leaved banksia, or lantern banksia, is a species of woody shrub of the family Proteaceae native to Australia. It grows in two separate regions of Central and Northern New South Wales east of the Great Dividing Range. Well known for its orange or red autumn inflorescences, which contrast with its green fine-leaved heath-like foliage, it is a medium to large shrub that can reach 6 m (20 ft) high and wide, though is usually half that size. In exposed heathlands and coastal areas, it is more often 1–2 m (3.3–6.6 ft).
The ornamental orchid species Phalaenopsis hieroglyphica is native to certain islands of the Philippines. Its flowers are creamy white with transverse markings that resemble glyphs. Through hybridization, growers have successfully created flowers with different shapes and colors while retaining the glyphs. Since 1975, the species has been protected under Appendix II of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).
Robiquetia, commonly known as pouched orchids, is a genus of flowering plants from the orchid family, Orchidaceae. Plants in this genus are epiphytes with long, sometimes branched, fibrous stems, leathery leaves in two ranks and large numbers of small, densely crowded flowers on a pendulous flowering stem. There are about eighty species found from tropical and subtropical Asia to the Western Pacific.
Kattungal Subramaniam Manilal is an Emeritus of the University of Calicut, a botany scholar and taxonomist, who devoted over 35 years of his life to research, translation and annotation work of the Latin botanical treatise Hortus Malabaricus. This epic effort brought to light the main contents of the book, a wealth of botanical information on Malabar that had largely remained inaccessible to English-speaking scholars, because the entire text was in the Latin language.
Lewis Roberts, OAM, is a distinguished naturalist and botanical illustrator. Lewis and his brother, Charlie Roberts, are probably the leading experts on the flora and fauna of south-eastern part Cape York Peninsula and the northern Wet Tropics area. For three generations his family has lived at Shipton's Flat, about 45 km south of Cooktown, where he and Charlie were home-schooled. His father, Jack Lewis, was a tin miner and self-taught naturalist.
Cymboglossum, synonym Ascidieria, is a genus of flowering plants from the orchid family, Orchidaceae. It is native to Borneo, the Philippines, Sulawesi and Sumatra.
Cryptostylis, commonly known as tongue orchids, is a genus of flowering plants from the orchid family. Tongue orchids are terrestrial herbs with one to a few stalked leaves at the base of the flowering stem, or leafless. One to a few dull coloured flowers are borne on an erect flowering stem. The most conspicuous part of the flower is the labellum, compared to the much reduced sepals and petals. At least some species are pollinated by wasps when they attempt to mate with the flower. There are about twenty five species found in South Asia, Southeast Asia and the South Pacific.
Macropodanthus cootesii, known as Cootes' macropodanthus, is a species from the family Orchidaceae that is endemic to the Philippines. It is named after Australian Orchid Enthusiast Jim Cootes. Macropodanthus cootesii was only described in December 2010, by Dr. George Tiong, in the German journal Die Orchidee.
Orchids of the Philippines is a book by Jim Cootes which was the first to document all existing Filipino orchid species.
Carnivorous Plants of Australia is a three-volume work on carnivorous plants by Allen Lowrie. The three tomes were published in 1987, 1989, and 1998, by University of Western Australia Press.
Cylindrolobus cootesii, or Cootes' cylindrolobus, is plant species of the family Orchidaceae endemic to the Philippines. It is found in the Philippines on the island of Luzon at elevations around 500 meters. It is a small to medium-sized, hot growing epiphyte with an elongated, slightly compressed stem carrying many towards the apical 1/2 to 1/3, distichous, spreading, narrow lanceolate, leathery, basally clasping leaves. It bears flowers on an axillary, .6 to .8" long, single flowered inflorescence. Cylindrolobus cootesii is named after Jim Cootes, an Australian orchid collector.
Dendrobium boosii, or Ronny Boos' dendrobium, is a species of plant in the family Orchidaceae endemic to the Philippines.
David Lloyd Jones is an Australian horticultural botanist and the author of many books and papers, especially on Australian orchids.
Vanda roeblingiana, Roebelen's vanda, is a species of orchid endemic to the mountain provinces of the island of Luzon in the Philippines. Hugh Low, a British colonial administrator and naturalist introduced the plant to London in 1893. The next year, Robert Allen Rolfe, an English botanist formally described the plant and thought it was originally collected from the vicinity of Singapore or Peninsular Malaysia. Low, who works in Clapton Nursery had collecting expedition to Southeast Asia with Singapore as headquarter.
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