Jim Cootes

Jim Cootes is a research associate for the Centre for Plant Biodiversity Research in Canberra, Australia.[1] For more than twenty-five years,he has been studying Philippine orchids, particularly in the wild, as an amateur botanist in Mindoro, Philippines. He is a frequent lecturer and has written numerous articles for major orchid journals and magazines. He resides in Australia, where he works as a mail carrier.[2]

Jim Cootes

Jim Cootes
Genre Non-fiction

Early life

Jim Cootes was born on June 17, 1950 in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.

Jim Cootes was a student of the Australian public school system until he finished high school in 1965. He then went to technical college, part-time whilst he was training as an apprentice machinist. For the majority of his working life, (32 years) he was a civilian employee of the Royal Australian Navy. He now work as a postman for Australia Post, this job he has held for almost 13 years.

Jim Cootes early years was spent in suburban Sydney, with his family in a beautiful bushland setting, near to the Georges River. The place where he lived, had many native plants, and his interest in orchids started, when he was very young. When he was 12 years old, his family moved to a more urban area, but his interest in Mother Nature, and particularly orchids has never lessened.

As he grew older, work took much of my time, he could no longer spend the time he once did looking at the orchids in the wild.

In the late 1970s Jim Cootes went to a local shopping mall and there was a combined Sydney Orchid Societies show. This started his interest in orchids again, and he went to a book shop in the mall, and purchased a book about growing orchids. The interest in growing continues to this day.

In 1977 he made his first trip to the Philippines at the urging of his Filipino workmates. His first trip to the mountains of central Luzon was in 1979 and he was able to get a number of native orchid species, which he were able to import into Australia without any difficulty. The majority of these species could be identified but a few remained without names. He started to collect whatever literature he could find on Philippine orchid species, and in 1984 the most important book, at the time, on Philippine orchid species was published. These books, entitled Orchidiana Philippiniana, contained all the known orchid species in a large two-volume set.

Modern taxonomic works on Philippine orchid species are few and far between. This started Jim Cootes to create a database on Philippine orchid species. As the database grew he decided that a book could be made from the information that he had gathered. he started to seriously import Philippine orchid species, and his collection grew considerably.

Many of his plants remained unidentified and this got him interested in doing the descriptions himself. Numerous books were purchased that explained the shapes of leaves, floral segments, etc. he suddenly became an amateur botanist/taxonomist. The first orchid named, was with his friend, David Banks, and they described Amesiella monticola, in 1998. he did not name any more species for some considerable time. In fact it was not until 2007, that he co-authored another orchid species, Malleola eburnea, with a Filipino colleague, Wally Suarez. Since then they have named numerous species, and made many new taxonomic combinations.

The Orchids of the Philippines (2001) took Jim Cootes over ten years to write. he even lived in the Philippines between 1997 and 2000 to do field work, and further studies, for the book. This book was finally published in 2001 and contained 338 species, all illustrated with colour images and a description of the plant and flower.

Jim Cootes continued to add species to the first book, and in 2011, with almost 800 species, Philippine Native Orchid Species was published. Again all the described species are illustrated with a colour image.

He has written countless articles over many years about orchids, particularly Asian orchids, and many on Philippine species.

Notable Works

The Orchids of the Philippines 2001 r.

Philippine Native Orchid Species 2009

Orchid Species Named After Jim Cootes

References

  1. ↑ http://www.waorchids.iinet.net.au/Jim_Cootes.htm
  2. ↑ "Jim_Cootes". Waorchids.iinet.net.au. Retrieved 2012-06-08.

External links