A second cluster of the Bonville leafless orchid turned up near Boambee

A second patch of the Bonville leafless orchid has been found near Boambee, about five kilometres from the only site anyone had confirmed. ABC News reported the find on November 4, 2026. The plant, Danhatchia copelandii, is critically endangered, grows nowhere else in the world, and shows above ground for a week or two a year when it flowers. It has no leaves and takes its nutrients from a fungus in the soil.

Teacher Nick Lambert went looking the day after he visited the original Bonville plants with botanist Lachlan Copeland on October 22, while the flowers were out. He said he found about 50 in rainforest in the foothills near Boambee, a plant about 10 centimetres tall, reddish and hairy, with tiny flowers. Copeland checked the next day. He said other botanists had tried and failed to find the orchid elsewhere, and that he had seen only six or seven plants at Bonville in recent years, and 17 this spring. Together the two sites now hold more than 60 known plants. In past springs his thorough counts at the first site ranged from about four plants to 43. The new patch falls inside the Great Koala National Park, on ground Copeland said had escaped historical logging. Brett Summerell, chief scientist at the Botanic Gardens of Sydney, said a second population matters for genetic diversity and as a backup if something happens at the first site. The orchid cannot be grown in cultivation, so the wild plants have to remain viable. A specimen is going to the National Herbarium of New South Wales at Mount Annan. The news is these two patches. It does not mean the species is safe.