Thaithong, Obchant   Dr   (née Na-Thalang)   (fl. Aust. 1968-1972)

In 2022 Associate Prof. Dr. Obchant Thaithong (Na-Thalang) is working as an honorary research associate in the Department of Botany at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, Thailand. Although her current research focuses on taxonomy of Orchidaceae and Asclepiadaceae, Dr. Thaithong was the first Thai bryologist.

Her interest in all kinds of small plants including bryophytes developed during fourth grade in Phuket, where she was born.

For her master's degree and PhD at the University of Sydney under the Colombo Plan scholarship (1968-1972), she decided to study bryophytes because of their cute tiny size and the fact that no Thai researcher had previously studied them.

After completing her PhD on the liverwort genus Riccia in Australia, she collaborated with Japanese Bryologists, Sinske Hattori and Naofumi Kitagawa, to identify and report 34 species of the liverwort genus Frullania in Thailand based on the specimens collected in Thailand during the expeditions of Kyoto University, Rijksherbarium, Leiden, and Aarhus University in 1957-1977.

She has done research on bryophytes of mangrove forest in Chanthaburi, Krabi, Phang Nga, Ranong, Satun, and Trat provinces in Thailand and has published the list of Thai bryophytes based on the literature published from 1901 to 1979 together with Renu Sornsamran.

Being the only Thai woman in Australia studying bryophytes was a great experience, she recalls, and she had the chance to collect the plants throughout Australia. She was in the same laboratory as Helen Hewson who worked on the liverwort genera Aneura and Riccardia of Borneo.

Source: pers.comm. Dr. Obchant Thaithong, via Chris Cargill (12/1/2022)
Portrait Photo: 2021, supplied by Dr. Obchant Thaithong.

Collecting localities for 'Na-Thalang, O.' from Australasian Virtual Herbarium, AVH (2022)

Unfortunately the bulk of her specimens have not been databased as they are all in the University of Sydney herbarium, (SYD). Their collections have not been databased for AVH. Fourteen duplicates of her collections, all types, went to the National Herbarium of New South Wales, (NSW), and the Australian National Herbarium (CANB) and a single flowering plant was lodged in the Northern Territory Herbarium (DNA). These are the only Na-Thalang collections currently available on AVH.

Data from 15 specimens