The renowned English primatologist and anthropologist Dame Dr Jane Goodall celebrates her 90th birthday on April 3 – and what a life it’s been.
With the support of renowned anthropologist Louis Leakey, Jane began studying primate behaviour in London in 1958 before going in 1960 (with her mother as chaperone) to Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania. In1962 Leakey raised funds to send her to Cambridge University to study for her PhD, the university accepting her for a doctorate even though she had no lesser degree at the time (she gained her bachelor’s at Cambridge before her PhD).
The orchid Spathoglottis Jane Goodall was registered by Singapore Botanic Gardens in 2005 with the Royal Horticultural Society. The plant was named in her honour when she visited the National Orchid Garden, part of the botanic gardens, in 2004.
Dame Jane, who will be in New Zealand in June as part of her Reasons for Hope tour, also has a species orchid named for her, Dendrobium goodallianum. Found in Papua New Guinea at about 450m elevation, this large epiphyte has sweetly coconut scented flowers that bloom for only a day. The orchid was discovered for science in 2003 during a collecting trip by members of the Leiden Botanical Garden and Naturalis, and was officially named in 2015 when Dame Jane visited the botanic garden in The Netherlands.
The single plant at Leiden’s Hortus Botanicus grows in a research greenhouse and is not available for public viewing as it is the only known specimen in the world. Unfortunately, no information was gathered during field collection as to how abundant this species was in its original habitat, and since 2003 the region where the orchid was found has succumbed to large-scale logging.
Tauranga Orchid Society 