The Author Speaks…

Friends,
Welcome…..! And greetings to you all from me, Sudhizong Lucksom from the mystical Orient of Sikkim in India.Though man’s quest for beauty, knowledge and his constant urge to unravel the mysterious realm of science is ancient I was more intrigued by beauty. My pursuit actually began as a childish bid to outdo the wide knowledge of numerous herbs and trees of my class mates who hailed from the village and thus had a first hand knowledge of them borne down by their parents and grandparents. Somewhere down the years I was smitten by the beauty of the wild orchids blooming under forest canopies, upon thick ancient trunks and jagged cliffs. And that led on to a more organized passion to explore, discover and delve deeper into their biological intricacies. As I probed harder in the wild, brought back home amazing specimen for study, the idea about a book on the orchid species took shape as the waters of the Teesta rolled on. So here I am today, about nearly two decades worth of long jungle and highland trails, rains, summer and biting winters with all the invaluable material for a book that I indeed feel would be my compliment to the tireless, probing spirit of mankind. Little perhaps had the famous botanist duo, King & Pantling who had set camp in the Sikkim of yore and had given to the world the first behemoth work, “The orchids of Sikkim Himalayas” (1898) thought that there would appear somebody from this very region who would revise their work. I simply feel overwhelmed to be one. My service in the state forest department have come as some sort of a divine design, I wouldn’t have been half successful hadn’t it been for the opportunities laid galore by my department on line of duty. Besides, there are numerous others to keep me in an irreparable debt for ever and whom I’ve struggled to thank adequately each time I could get a new species published. Apart from making a mere grandiose publication about the species and feeling smug about being lauded it is my chief goal to make everybody feel for the orchid. As civilization marches we’ve seen the wild wealth recede and so are the orchids an endangered breed.And of course commerce and man’s insatiable lust for wealth have had their share of assault upon the existence of the species. So I would be a bit more vocal about letting the orchids be upon their perch, be it a tree trunk or a cliff for it is best there.

MY PROFILE

I’m called : Lucksom, Sudhizong. By profession, a forest official in the state forest department of Sikkim, a state in India. My irrepressible love for plants revealed to me the enigma of the vast, baffling world of wild orchids of the Sikkim Himalayas. A graduate in Botany, my sole passion for the flower, thirst to discover, knack to explore and my tireless probing spirit turned me into an orchid connoisseur, a researcher, an explorer, a conservationist and today a prolific authority on the orchids of the Himalayas with a book in the offing that would be the most detailed, elaborate and well illustrated with the most exotic shots of the species in full bloom in the secretest of the wild.MY MISSION : Initially, to see my work in print and then winning over the hearts of those who acquaint this elusive beauty that stole mine. And, of course, and ultimately spearheading a struggle for the conservation of the myriad species getting lost to civilization. I am also vocal against “Bias diversity” which is the planting of trees regarded only for their commercial value owing to their fast growing nature such as the pine and the eucalyptus which support no epiphytes to which belong this invaluable genera of orchids including many other life forms. I am also concerned about the excessive attention given by growers only to the hybrid orchids with little regard for the wild ones which actually is the mother of all the hybrid ones, and, I hate this prejudice.My Dream : is to wake everybody up to the ethereal beauty of the wild orchids which I feel is ethereal indeed, given their rapid loss and endangered status owing to excessive trafficking, de-habitating and destruction of their wild habitats. I wish to awake everybody to this grim reality and make them sense that this beauty, is indeed, too precious to lose.My Message : well, you guessed it – Surely, orchids look best sitting under its canopy than upon your pots. Stop orchid trafficking and de-habitating. And, stop “Bias diversity”. And my request goes, “Please be gentle to this flower. Pick one if you find it fallen off its tree and do rehabilitate it”.My Gusto!: Got you! - well, at 50, I still saunter up all my way up to 16,000 feet combing the unforgiving Sikkim highlands hoping to catch a glimpse of my favourite flower. And I’m up with an entire baggage of sketch boards, references and an complete set of Nikon F10 and yes, the ration to last the trip. But, then the fact I’m sentimental about is that about a century ago the famous botanist duo, King & Pantling had actually hired the Lepcha tribals (the native tribesmen of Sikkim) to collect the species from all over Sikkim knowing their legendary knowledge of the wild. And today, a century later, a Lepcha (myself) has accomplished the most daunting task of revising the work of Sir King & Pantling (1898) with even greater details including the ones they had missed. Proud to be one from the Lepcha community whose mythical belief to be as old as their mountains is still part of the local folklore. Today, I feel, that I have done my people proud and lived up to the legendary tag, that the Lepchas are born naturalists. So finally I say - that you could take a Lepcha out of his forest but cannot take out the forest from him.

This book is written not only toexpose the Rich biodiversity of Sikkim but also to encourage the future workersto carry out the detail inventorisation of orchid repository of Sikkim, Horizontal andvertical Trans-boundary migration of the species and its limitation. Thefactors controlling the species speciation. Orchid species as an indicatorplant for a particular forest type.