Flora of New Zealand Series

Original localities: "Throughout the Islands; in deep woods. From the Bay of Islands, R. Cunningham, to Port Preservation, Lyall." Type: K(?).

Plant at fl. to c. 100 cm. tall. Swollen rhizomes long-lived and extensively branched, individual parts to 25 × 5 cm. Stem erect, stout or slender. Scale lvs widely spaced. Raceme often long and fls ∞ (e.g. to 40 or more), erect to ± drooping. Per. c. 14 mm. long, brownish or greenish mottled with paler knobs, adjacent plants sts contrasting in colour; lobes slightly thickened marginally. Lateral sepals connate little above the gibbous base but their margins lying close together. Labellum ± oblong, long-adnate to per.-tube; long median calli crested; margin undulate and ± lobed, membr. above, thickened and twisted in the lower adnate part. Column very short, wing represented only by a minute ± curved process; anther short, operculate, filament transversely pleated at back; stigma immediately below anther and ultimately covered by it.

DIST.: N., S., St., Ch.

"Not uncommon in dark shaded places but easily overlooked".

FL. 11–12–2.

The only confirmed record north of lat. 38º is one from Little Barrier Island (Forest c. 1200 ft altitude, W. M. Hamilton, 12 Jan. 1965, CHR 141185). Hooker's record of Bay of Islands may have been based on the "fragment of a specimen" mentioned by A. Cunningham (Compan. bot. Mag. 2, 1837, 376).

G. leucopetala Col. in T.N.Z.I. 18, 1886, 268 was described in great detail from one fl., and differs in no significant respect. "Hab. In dark forests on the eastern slopes of the Ruahine mountain range, 1850–52; and in similar spots in the Seventy-mile Bush, between Norsewood and Danneverke, County of Waipawa, 1884–85: W.C." Type: WELT 24288 in Herb. Colenso is a 2-fld plant associated with a Colenso label "Gastrodia leucopetala Col. Column very small" and has been annotated by Cheeseman as from Dannevirke. AK 3682 also labelled as "Type of G. leucopetala" consists of 3 plants.

The range of habitat of G. cunninghamii has not been fully recorded. Most specimens come from forests of Nothofagus but the sp. occurs also on Mt Egmont and in Stewart and Chatham Is where Nothofagus is absent. Campbell (loc. cit. 1962, 292) writes of rhizomes to a depth of 60 cm. or more below the surface at Cascade Creek, Fiordland, where also "4 flowering stems lying on the circumference of a circle 1.2 m. in diameter were attached to the one basal rhizome". An unusual site has been noted by D. R. Given (Auck. bot. Soc. Newsletter 16 (3) 1959, 4), near Takaka: "The plants were growing in alluvial soil on the river bank close to the trunks of willows. The nearest native forest area was some miles distant and the only tree other than willows in the vicinity was a solitary plum . . .A total of 80 flower spikes was counted along less than a chain of river bank."

Fls under certain circumstances smell quite strongly. Hooker (Handbk N.Z. Fl. 1864, 264) states: "Odour of plant aromatic but disagreeable (Haast)" but Haast, in a letter to Colenso, described the smell as "poisonous". Other observers find a strong sweet scent. Elsdon Best's specimen at AK is annotated "Perei or maikaika, root eaten".