Ethiopia's orchids are sparsely represented in herbaria and their biology, ecology and conservation status remains poorly understood. With detailed descriptions, keys, line drawings, distribution maps and colour photographs, this field guide is an invaluable source to anyone who wants to identify these orchids in the field.

Babile Elephant Sanctuary in the semi-arid part of east Ethiopia is one of the protected areas. The sanctuary was established to protect the only known population of the isolated, ecologically distinct subspecies Loxodonta africana orleansi (Barnest et al., 1999) but currently proved that it is Loxodonta africana africana (Yasuko et al.,2011). As a result of mass influx of a large number of farmers and their livestock from the east and north, the home range of elephants of Babile has shrunk by about 65.5% since 1976 (Yirmed Demeke et al., 2006). Although it has been designated as the largest sanctuary for elephants (6984 km2) in the country (Stephenson, 1976), there has been no systematic ecological, floristic and ethnobotanical studies that had been carried out until recently.