For the majority of his working life, (32 years) he was a civilian employee of the Royal Australian Navy.

Cootes's early years was spent in suburban Sydney, near the Georges River, with his family.

In the late 1970s, Jim Cootes attended a combined Sydney Orchid Societies show.

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 was able to import into Australia without any difficulty.

These books, entitled Orchidiana Philippiniana, contained all the known orchid species in a large two-volume set.

In fact it was not until 2007 that he co-authored another orchid species, Malleola eburnea, with a Filipino colleague, Wally Suarez.

This book was finally published in 2001 and contained 338 species, all illustrated with colour images and a description of the plant and flower.