Mr. David L. Jones B. Ag. Sc., Dip Hort.

David Jones is a professional horticulturalist and botanist who has been studying various groups of plants for most of his life. He continues to expand his knowledge of Australia’s flora by studying lesser known or poorly documented species. He is the author or co-author of 29 books, including Cycads of the World, Palms Throughout the World, Palms in Australia and Native Orchids of Australia. He is the author of numerous scientific papers on a wide range of subjects and has described many new species of plants, particularly native orchids. He has a long interest in orchid biology and has pioneered research on aspects of orchid pollination. He is at the centre of a network of professional and amateur botanists across Australia expanding and expediting the process of the search for and study of orchids throughout Australia.  He has been a member of the Australian Orchid Foundation Research Committee since its inception, having served 15 years as its Chairman.

Dr. Ben Wallace BSc (Hons 1) PhD

Dr. Ben Wallace has current associations with the Orchid Research Group at the Centre for Plant Biodiversity Research and is a consultant in botany, ecology and horticulture. Much of his past work, including his doctoral research focused on the ecology and eco-physiology of orchids as well as other plant groups. He is a past Horticultural Botanist (1982-1990) with the Royal Botanic Gardens in Sydney, traveling to many Australian as well as exotic locations including Chile, Costa Rica, PNG, Borneo, Yunnan, Thailand, New Caledonia, Kenya, Zimbabwe, and New Zealand. He was also Director of the Living Collections Division (1991-2000) at the Australian National Botanic Gardens in Canberra, and a member of the Centre for Plant Biodiversity Research having collected many living specimens for the work of the Orchid Research Group.
He has maintained a personal collection of epiphytic orchids for some 40 years and is an avid photographer of orchids, both in culture and in the wild. He is a frequent presenter of lectures on various aspects of orchids as well as other plant groups. He operates ecotours to China and Malesia.

Dr. Colin C. Bower PhD.

Dr. Colin Bower obtained his PhD in entomology from the University of Sydney in 1975. This was followed by 17 years working as a research entomologist for the NSW Department of Agriculture on the development of integrated pest management systems in apples at Bathurst and Orange. He became a Program Leader, a position he held for 10 years from 1992, before becoming a private consultant. He has been absorbed in bushwalking, natural history and nature photography all his adult life, becoming interested in native terrestrial orchids in the late 1970's. He began studying their pollination in the 1980's combining his interests in both insects and orchids. His special interest is the sexual deception pollination syndrome in the Bird Orchids of the Chiloglottis alliance and the Spider Orchids, Arachnorchis (Caladenia) on which he has published a number of scientific papers. His work demonstrated the high degree of pollinator specificity in these orchids, leading to the identification of many new cryptic orchid species. He is currently engaged in a project on the pollinators of threatened sexually deceptive Arachnorchis (Caladenia) species with the aim of developing strategies to improve orchid conservation by identifying and protecting their pollinators.