[MPWG] Edible, African orchids and the Southern Highlands Conservation Program

[Elizabeth Kirchner]

Hi everybody,

I'm looking for information about three terrestrial orchid species, 
Disa, Habenaria, and Satyrium, that lives in the Southern Highlands of 
Tanzania (which is scarp montane forest), their edible tubers 
traditionally collected and boiled as a "rural delicacy". Traditional 
harvesting of orchids in Zambia, Malawi, and Tanzania had always been 
sustainable. Recently, though, demand in Zambia his increased 
dramatically to stock a thriving commercial demand, says the Southern 
Highlands Conservation Program (SHCP) who is currently collecting 
interview and sampling data says their really interesting Web site 
(http://www.southernhighlandstz.org/currentactivities.html). The impact 
on orchid population in Zambia is well documented, and the SHCP is 
monitoring orchids in protected and unprotected sites in Tanzania.

I'd like to know more about the orchid work and will be in their neck of 
the woods in mid-June, but I'm having no luck contacting SHCP.

Does anybody know the Southern Highlands Conservation Program, this 
orchid research, or this orchid. Has anybody eaten it?

Thanks a lot and regards MPWG,
Liz


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