Dendrobium of Borneo. 2014. 1199 figs. XII, 946 p. gr8vo. Hardcover.

Dendrobium, with approximately 1450 species, is one of the most diverse genera in the orchid family and the second biggest orchid genus in Southeast Asia after Bulbophyllum. Its natural range extends from Japan south across the Pacific to Tahiti and New Zealand, and from China and India to New Guinea and Australia. Centres of speciation are found in the Himalayan region, Indochina,the Malay Archipelago (especially Sumatra and Borneo), the Philippines and New Guinea. Dendrobiums have been popular with growers since the mid nineteenth century. They continue to be popular today and many beautiful hybrids have been bred.Borneo is one of several hot spots of Dendrobium speciation. With 167 named species in fifteen sections, as well as several others that remain to be described, Borneo is the second most important location after New Guinea of Dendrobium speciation in Malesia. Most species occur as epiphytes in hill and lower montane forest at moderate elevation, mostly between about 900 and 1600 m. Controversy surrounds the recent trend toward the recognition at generic level of an increasing number of former sections of Dendrobium, the rationale for doing so having been poorly explained by some authors. Molecular phylogenetic phylogenies based on chloroplast and nuclear markers, together with embryological data, are demonstrating how important evolutionary interspecific and intergeneric relationships are when attempting to produce a stable modern classification. Recent molecular evidence, in particular, consistently suggests that the majority of segregate genera nest within a broadly circumscribed Dendrobium. Evolutionarily speaking, they are part of Dendrobium. Recognition of these genera would render Dendrobium paraphyletic. Taxa belonging to former segregate genera Cadetia (now Dendrobium section Cadetia), Diplocaulobium (now Dendrobium section Diplocaulobium), Epigeneium (now Dendrobium section Sarcopodium) andFlickingeria (now Dendrobium section Crinifera) are in need of modern revision, which is beyond the scope of this book. For practical reasons a circumscription of Dendrobium in its strict sense is used in this account of the Bornean taxa. My own ideas on the preparation of an account of the species native to Borneo were encouraged by Datuk Chan Chew Lun, Managing Director of Natural History Publications (Borneo). Working on this account has been an interesting and at times frustrating task, and the account presented here will, I am sure, not be flawless and certainly will not be the final word on thesubject. Several undescribed species have been identified during this study, a few of which still remain known only from photographs. Others, no doubt, will continue to be discovered long after the publication of this volume, as important and sci5ntifically little-known areas, are explored further.