The phylogeny of typical spider orchid (Caladenia subgenus Calonema) is investigated for the first time. The analyses were performed using 17 RAPD and 10 ISSR primers on 30 taxa representing the three spider orchid groups (the dilatata, patersonii and reticulata groups) yielding 135 RAPD and 63 ISSR polymorphic markers. The average number of polymorphic markers produced from 17 RAPD and 10 ISSR primers were 5.12 and 4.48, respectively. 76 RAPD markers and 38 ISSR markers were polymorphic within spider orchid species. The highest number of amplified DNA fragments were produced from OPE15 (8.77 fragments) and UBC 842 (6.71 fragments) while OPF04 (2.93 fragments) and UBC 825 (3.02 fragments) gave the smallest number of amplification products. The average Dice genetic similarity of pairs of individuals within a species ranged from 0.772 to 0.939 based on RAPD and from 0.770 to 0.976 for ISSR data.