Lycaste, Ida & Anguloa
Dr. Henry Oakley
Brickell Award Winner 2003
Henry’s interest in Lycaste has developed over fifty years. This has included 28 expeditions into South and Central America to study their natural habitats. He conserves through cultivation all the known Anguloa species and hybrids and all but three of the known Lycaste species. In 1970, only twenty five species were recognised and mainly through Henry’s work, this has been increased to over 60. He provided expertise and material for a PhD thesis to a University of London student, Angela Ryan for scent, DNA, chromosome and morphological analysis. With Angela, he published a paper establishing a new genus, Ida from the section Finbriatae of Lycaste.
In 2008, he published the monograph ‘Lycaste, Ida and Anguloa, The Essential Guide’. This outlined three new species, five new natural hybrids and one subspecies of Lycaste. In 1999, he described a new species, two new natural hybrids, two new varieties and rediscovered two lost species of Anguloa. During his studies, he established the correct identity of two hundred synonyms. He has assisted the CITES authority in the identification of valid taxa. Henry is the accredited international authority on Lycaste and Anguloa for the American Orchid Society.
Henry’s collection has a thousand pressed herbarium and 800 alcohol specimens, eight hundred of his own botanical drawings, around 90,000 slide and digital photographs. He also has a photographic record of pollinia morphology and physiology. At the time of the Brickell Award, the collection contained 3000 plants, probably the most comprehensive in the world.
Henry has won seven Royal Horticultural Society Gold Medals and three Holford Medals for his displays at the Chelsea Flower Show. He lectures throughout the world. He has raised species seedlings for conservation purposes, bred primary hybrids to confirm the parentage of putative natural hybrids, and raised other hybrids suitable for modern horticulture, with a flowering season of eight months or more, which have been distributed in over twenty countries.