Orchids focus of Nature P.E.I. monthly meeting

Botanist will share years of discoveries on the Island

Take a break from the winter weather on Tuesday evening to learn more about the fascinating array of orchids that are found on P.E.I. with Atlantic Canada Conservation Data Centre (AC CDC) botanist Colin Chapman.

He will be the guest speaker at Nature P.E.I.’s monthly meeting, to be held at the Carriage House at Beaconsfield in Charlottetown. All are welcome to attend.

The evening begins at 7:30 p.m. with the Nature P.E.I. public meeting, raffle and refreshments. The feature presentation begins at 8 p.m.

AC CDC has made dozens of exciting botanical discoveries on Prince Edward Island over the last 20 years, including new provincial records of everything from stunning orchids to cryptic sedges.

With such an increase in plant biodiversity knowledge of the Island, an updated flora was needed.

To start addressing this need, the P.E.I. Museum & Heritage Foundation, Nature P.E.I. and the AC CDC partnered in the development of the first section of a new online Flora of P.E.I.

Chapman will talk about the first instalment – a fully-illustrated online key to the orchids of P.E.I., including diagnostic pictures and distribution maps.

Chapman is originally from Ottawa, where he made many significant discoveries during biological inventories in the Carolinian and Great Lakes-St. Lawrence forest zones.

He studied at the University of Ottawa and the University of Toronto, where he investigated hybridization between Arctic plants.