Darwin and the Lost Art of the Naturalist - and Orchids

Earlier this week, I had a "guest post" published on the travel/ocean science blog Moving Sushi, entitled "Darwin and the Lost Art of the Naturalist", in which I briefly sketch out some of the problems with modern science and how we need to cultivate not only excellent science communicators, but a new skill-set that allows us to draw together and interpret all the many scientific discoveries and ongoing monitoring to deliver meaningful knowledge to society at large. Or is it really the return of an old skill-set - the naturalist? You can read it over at Moving Sushi; it's a little shorter than I might have liked (they gave me a word limit to stick to!).

In it, I rather briefly mention Darwin's interest in orchids. Seeing as I have a blog on that subject, I thought it might make an interesting post...

Darwin devoted significant research to this group of plants, as you can see over at Darwin Online, which freely publishes much of Darwin's work online in electronic format. In particular, his interest was in how orchids are fertilised (in the wild), which is indeed a fascinating topic. He spent around 10 months of his time absorbed solely by that subject, which ultimately culminated in a book, On the various contrivances by which British and foreign orchids are fertilised by insects, and on the good effects of intercrossing, which was published after his most famous work. In it, he adds further weight to his concepts around the necessity for sexual reproduction to maintain "fitness" -  remember, he made these intellectual connections without any knowledge of genes or DNA:

"THE object of the following work is to show that the contrivances by which Orchids are fertilised, are as varied and almost as perfect as any of the most beautiful adaptations in the animal kingdom; and, secondly, to show that these contrivances have for their main object the fertilisation of each flower. In my volume 'On the Origin of Species' I have given only general reasons for my belief that it is apparently a universal law of nature that organic beings require an occasional cross with another individual; or, which is almost the same thing, that no hermaphrodite fertilises itself for a perpetuity of generations. Having been blamed for propounding this doctrine without giving ample facts, for which I had not, in that work, sufficient space, I wish to show that I have not spoken without having gone into details.

I have been led to publish this little treatise separately, as it has become inconveniently large to be incorporated with the rest of the discussion on the same subject. And I have thought, that, as Orchids are universally acknowledged to rank amongst the most singular and most modified forms in the vegetable kingdom, the facts to be presently given might lead some observers to look more curiously into the habits of our several native species. An examination of their many beautiful contrivances will exalt the whole vegetable kingdom in most persons' estimation. I fear, however, that the necessary details will be too minute and complex for any one who has not a strong taste for Natural History. This treatise affords me also an opportunity of attempting to show that the study of organic beings may be as interesting to an observer who is fully convinced that the structure of each is due to secondary laws, as to one who views every trifling detail of structure as the result of the direct interposition of the Creator."

Charles Darwin (1862)  On the various contrivances by which British and foreign orchids are fertilised by insects, and on the good effects of intercrossing. London: John Murray pp1-2.

In particular, he was taken in by the extraordinary flowers of the Catasetinae, which to those who are not "orchid geeks" might be unfamiliar - they possess remarkable "hair trigger" mechanisms which effectively "shoot" the pollinator with their polinnia after they touch the mechanism. It's really quite amazing:

Another of the key findings in the book was a prediction - a hallmark of good science:

"I fear that the reader will be wearied, but I must say a few words on the Angræcum sesquipedale, of which the large six-rayed flowers, like stars formed of snow-white wax, have excited the admiration of travellers in Madagascar. A whip-like green nectary of astonishing length hangs down beneath the labellum. In several flowers sent me by Mr. Bateman I found the nectaries eleven and a half inches long, with only the lower inch and a half filled with very sweet nectar. What can be the use, it may be asked, of a nectary of such disproportional length? We shall, I think, see that the fertilisation of the plant depends on this length and on nectar being contained only within the lower and attenuated extremity. It is, however, surprising that any insect should be able to reach the nectar: our English sphinxes have probosces as long as their bodies: but in Madagascar there must be moths with probosces capable of extension to a length of between ten and eleven inches!"

Emphasis is mine. Indeed, some time later (1903), this very beast was discovered, initially named Xanthopan morgani praedicta Rothschild & Jordan, 1903. Indeed, fellow "co-inventor" (whose letter on the subject spurred Darwin to get around to publishing his most famous work) of the theory of evolution, and entomologist extraordinare, Alfred Russel Wallace, suggested that it would be a hawkmoth, noting the existence of a moth with a proboscis almost long enough in East Africa; this species and the one from Madagascar are currently considered the same species Xanthopan morgani (Walker 1856). Wikipedia has an article on the beast. And there's also this video:

Darwin also made an interesting observation that such tightly co-evolved species ultimately depend on each other:

"If such great moths were to become extinct in Madagascar, assuredly the Angræcum would become extinct. "

And indeed, this is a great threat for many such co-dependent species, and one of the many reasons in situ conservation is (wherever possible) always better than captive breeding of the last few of some endangered rarity. 

We have an Angraecum sesquipedale - it nearly flowered once... Angraecum longicalcar (which we don't yet have) has an even longer spur - up to 40cm. Somewhere out there in Madagascar must be a moth with an even more impressive "business end"! These interesting relationships are further explored in a 1991 paper by Gene Kritsky, published in American Entomologist, available here.

I won't cover the rest of the book - if this has piqued your interest, you can of course read it yourself!

Orchid Flask Review

Last week, fellow South African orchid blogger David Vaughan, who blogs at http://phalaenopsisspot.blogspot.com, offered to send me a flask of Dendrobium crystallinum to review. I did point out that I was quite inexperienced at deflasking, but he still insisted it was a good idea... Never one to say no to plants, I quickly agreed. David enjoys growing orchids from seed, a topic I am intrigued by, but have never gone through the effort of doing, due to the difficulties of creating the sterile growing conditions and meeting the other requirements (like space...!) for successful in vitro germination and propagation of orchids.

If you're not particularly familiar with the topic, orchid seeds are mostly almost microscopic and dust-like, with little if any "food" in them (compared to the larger seeds of other plants, which have the embryo and a parcel of "food" to give it a head start in life). Orchids take a slightly different strategy - they make millions, even billions of tiny seeds that are little more than embryos without any "food" stored away. So in nature, they have to be really lucky to grow up. What happens with most orchids is a few of the seeds happen to settle somewhere where the right kind of fungus (called an "orchid mycorrhiza") just happens to be growing, and the orchid baby then basically germinates and then steals nutrients from the fungus, which is where it gets the energy to grow big enough to start producing its own sugars from photosynthesis; in some cases the orchid may ultimately give something back to the fungi, but I believe most orchids are quite "selfish" in this relationship, and many seem to keep leaning on the fungus throughout life to supplement their food supply; a few orchids don't photosynthesize at all (so-called "achlorophyllous" orchids) and get all their nutrients from fungi [many plants have fungal partners (mycorrhizae), which they give sugars in return for micronutrients and water; some plants "root systems" end up being mostly fungi; many garden plants will benefit from such fungi and you can buy cultures of them]. Interestingly, the kinds of fungi orchids "team up" with are often pathogenic (cause disease) in other plants. Really young orchid "seedlings" are made up of strange "lumps" of cells called "protocorms" - they look quite unlike any seedling you've ever seen. A little later in their development, the "protocorms" differentiate and produce roots and shoots.

Obviously, growing orchids this way (using fungi) is mostly really hit or miss, so several decades ago, people came up with the idea of giving the orchid embryos everything they need to develop in a sterile "petri dish" (known as a "flask"). Of course, if you put something in a rich nutrient broth, other things are also going to take advantage (bacteria and fungi) so you have to ensure not a single one makes it into the flask with the orchid - which is perhaps the hardest part of the process (of course, getting the growth media right is an art and science in itself...).

Anyway, after that little diversion about orchid seeds, germination and fungi, on to the flask itself!

Review
I asked David to randomly select one of the flasks he'd prepared to send to me. As David asked me to independently "review" the flask, I'll split this up into a couple of sub-sections.

Packing/packaging
The flask was very well packed, nestled in bubble wrap and packing "peanuts" and arrived the day after he sent it. Once unpacked, the flask was nicely labelled with a picture of the flower of the adult plant, along with the name, and on the back, useful unflasking instructions and of course records of when the plants had sown and been put (replated) into the current flask on the lid. The lid is also well sealed with tape, which should help prevent too much inadvertent contamination, or horror-of-horrors the flask opening in transit. Perhaps it's no coincidence that as someone who cares for living things as a profession (when not mucking about with orchids, he's an aquarist specialising in fish health) David is evidently well versed in how to pack living things for travel!

I took a couple of quick shots when I unpacked on Friday (28 June) last week:

Well packed!
Under the "peanuts" was a nifty construction of bubblewrap
that suspended the flask in transit

Helpful labelling.

Name of plant and picture of flower of this species, Dendrobium crystallinum.

Why, postman, why?
Of course, the post office completely ignored the "this way up at all times" stickers, and the box was handed over to me on its side. I suspect the flask spent some of its journey in the wrong orientation, as the "plug" of medium in which the seedlings are growing was lying at about 45 degrees across the container (it still is as I haven't really had the heart to slam the flask hard enough to dislodge it back into place). The plants seemed unscathed, and the agar wasn't too shaken up. Of course, there is little the sender can do to prevent this sort of thing in transit; I've seen parcels make it through the South African post and even deliveries by courier companies looking like a herd of elephants has used the packaging as a trampoline, so this was relatively pristine! Pictures below are immediately after unpacking.

Dislodged plants and medium - not too bad!

Dislodged plants and medium, other side

Impressions
I've had the flask in my possession for a week now, and everything still looks great; the flask has been sitting on a seed germination/propagation "heat mat"/germinator (supposedly should keep them at 19) as it is midwinter here, and David suggested they'd prefer being kept more around 18 degrees or above than suffering through the 10 degrees or so the balcony is currently experiencing at night.

The seedlings all look very healthy to me; they seem large enough to make it through the "deflasking" process, and the leaves and roots seem well formed. They'll still be happy in the medium for a little while; I'd like to only deflask when I get to try out a product (AgriSil) I cover below under "tips".

Some shots from today (Saturday 6 July):

Good roots.

Strong, healthy shoots

Healthy baby orchids

It is quite hard to take good macros through slightly cloudy plastic which is all fogged up!

A few of the plants around the edges were looking a little "ragged" - this is either from transport damage or from where they ended up sitting in a "puddle" of water - I've since tipped the flask at an angle to stop this from happening; the damage is quite minor however - and no fault of David's. 

Some tips from David
I discussed the difficulties I'd had with deflasking, most notably with fungi, and David recommended trying a supplement rich in silica to help "harden off" the fragile seedlings; this is a fairly unusual supplement that doesn't seem to have yet made its way into the general gardening realm in South Africa, so is only really availble from agricultural suppliers, who tend to sell it in large volumes. It's not particularly expensive, but the courier costs I was quoted for delivery were outrageous (in the region of 5 times the cost of 5 litres of the product), so I have yet to acquire any. The supplement is called AgriSil K50, manufactured by Plant Health Products, and distributed in South Africa by Madumbi. They also do some very interesting looking "bioweapons" for plant health! The product he mentioned, AgriSil, is basically a solution of Potassium Silicate. Plants use silica to build stronger cell walls - essentially out of glass - and that helps keep out invaders like bacteria and fungi. The dose he recommends is 2.5ml of AgriSil per litre of water adjusted down to pH 6.5 (AgriSil starts at pH 11!); the rinsed seedlings (roots only) are then soaked in this for 12 hours before being potted up in a community pot ("compot").

I'm quite keen to try out this approach, as it makes sense to me. Armour coating an orchid in glass from the inside? I'm in! 

He also noted he'd experienced more success deflasking into (small!) bark chips than any other medium, as he'd also found media that retain a lot of water (like sphagnum) tend to encourage problems with fungi and bacteria. My previous deflasking trials lead to the complete loss of all the cattleyas in pure moss, and I only got 4 out of the one which was mixed moss/bark (bacteria and fungi). Later on some scale moved in and started wreaking some havoc...It's possible I also was too cautious in maintaining high humidity for too long - I left the propagator lids on the plants for many weeks; typical "hardening off" times are apparently more like a fortnight.

David currently has flasks of Dendrobium crystallinum available for sale (presumably only within South Africa due to shipping complications with orchids across international borders), with several other species and hybrids close to being ready. He keeps a list of what is available on his blog at http://phalaenopsisspot.blogspot.com/p/the-availability-list.html. Each flask is about R175 plus postage, and contains roughly 30 plants. It will probably take several years before you see your baby orchid flower, but it's quite rewarding, and if you want lots of one plant (or maybe some spares to share/sell) it's a good way of getting plants, and often a great way of getting unusual plants.Given the sample of this species I've received, I can't say I have any hesitation whatsoever in saying that if he has something you're interested in acquiring, you should get hold of him! It's also often quite interested to raise a bunch of the "same" plant up and notice how much variation there can be in a species or especially a single hybrid cross, particularly in the flowers.

If you'd like to follow these seeds from their "birth", check out these two posts from his blog:
http://phalaenopsisspot.blogspot.com/2013/04/dendrobium-crystallinum-babies.html
http://phalaenopsisspot.blogspot.com/2013/05/may-babies.html

Deflasking seedlings is an interesting additional "angle" to growing orchids; it's not quite as easy as growing many "normal" plants from seed, but most of the hard work is out of the way when you get a flask of seedlings that are ready to be de-flasked and potted up. Give it a go!

Some handy sites - Blotanical, Orchid Board & folia.

I've spent a fair amount of free time lately drifting around the "orchid interwebs". You'll notice some links and widgets in my sidebar to the right. I thought I'd highlight what I particularly like about three of these which other bloggers (and non-bloggers alike) should find interesting. Two of these sites are great, even if you don't like orchids (gasp!).

First up, blotanical.com, "where garden blogs bloom".

blotanical.com

Blotanical is a community of blogs which aims to share your "gardening" blog with what should be an interested community of fellow bloggers and blog-readers. Blotanical is nice to "newbie" users in that it promotes the newest blogs for a period of time (basically the 100 newest blogs); in theory, this gives your blog some time in the "limelight" to attact the interest of the rest of the users. I think it also slightly "weights" your blog in some of the other rankings too.

Like most community/social sites, you get out what you put in; if you're not interacting with other members and their blogs, you're unlikely to become popular on the site - there are a few fellow orchid maniacs on the site - active amongst them are klaraau01 (My Orchids Journal), makarimi (Orchid de Dangau) and MM (Essence of Stanhopea). Whilst true gardeners are the focus of the site (and the majority of its users), specialised plant growers and indoor/balcony gardeners are also there. The community as a whole is quite welcoming of fellow plant enthusiasts - whatever their particular plant passion might be.

You'll spend quite a bit of time "picking" posts - blotanical's "favourite"/rating system, as well as messaging other users. It's important you do this when you first join in order to build your profile and become part of the community - and of course to carry on doing this over time! Blotanical also gives you an opportunity to see who has been "picking" your posts - handy to find users who also share your interests. You'll also find a lot of blotanical users commenting on your blog too.

You can of course search the site and its blogs, but you'll probably find it more interesting to browse geographically and find other users near you.

The only thing I find a huge drawback to the site is that it really breaks multi-tabbed browsing; if you try and visit a lot of different "plots" (blotanical's user profiles) or blogs within blotanical in many different tabs, it ultimately ends up setting all of them to the last one you happened to click on. I'm a big fan of opening a bunch of tabs, and letting them load whilst I get on with reading something else. With blotanical, you're best off interacting with the entire site through just one tab. Using blotanical is a bit like growing plants from seed - there's quite a lot of waiting involved. :) A futher slight niggle is that to get to your own "plot" if you've moved off it to another (which you inevitably will as "plots" are pretty key to the whole thing), you have to click on the currently active plot and then "return to my plot" - I think your own "plot" should always be in the navigation as a single click location.

On the whole, the navigation is a little unusual - I received many messages from members commenting on posts and then telling me to give them a shout if I got stuck on the site or couldn't figure it out - clearly it's not all that intuitive to end users, so the developers might like to consider looking into that. If you do get stuck, try the helpful FAQ section, or message an active user; when you sign up, someone is usually assigned to help you out, so you'll find a message from them in your messages - they'll be more than happy to guide you through anything you get stuck with!

Don't worry too much about the navigation niggles I've just mentioned - it's certainly interesting to see how gardeners around the world are blogging their various experiences; give it a visit some time, particularly if you want to read more about plants and gardens and take your plant-related blog to more readers (who doesn't!?).

You can find Orchids on a Balcony here on Blotanical.com.

I was actually told about blotanical by a user from the next site in the list... 

Orchid Board, "Most complete orchid forum on the web"

Orchid Board is an extremely friendly and welcoming community for an online forum. I'm sure that many of you who have been online for any length of time have witnessed the amount of flame-wars and trolling that goes on in many forums online. Orchid Board is remarkably free of this; I think it's largely down to the moderation team who do a good job, the existing community of users - and perhaps orchid people are just more level-headed than the average internet denizen?

User questions are answered quite quickly, and surprisingly you rarely get answers from existing users along the lines of "search function, learn how to use it" - instead, no matter how many times someone has asked Help!!!!1 My Phalaenopsis is Dying!!1!! someone will take the time to answer that query, perhaps with some reference to earlier threads, but never in a condescending manner or one that indicates the poster is an idiot who can't use a search function.

Of course, the forums have advanced users too, so you'll see plenty of topics that expand your knowledge of orchid culture and related subjects. Several orchid vendors and people with a vast knowledge of orchid culture regularly read the board and share their knowledge.

The board also has group growing "projects", where members vote on plants they would like to try their hand at growing, and where members share their growing experience with that species over time - a group learning exercise, or global e-learning evening class if you like! Another feature that might be of interest is the monthly photo contests, with both beginner and advanced categories.

One feature that brings me great joy is that users can immediately mark another user as a spambot when you notice one has invaded the system - this helps prevent the whole forum being over-run with rubbish and a huge clean-up job. You can also of course report posts to moderators, but the warning system puts an immediate posting ban on such users whilst the moderation team has a chance to review that user's behaviour.

If you're looking for an online community of orchid nuts (seed pods?) this is probably the one to join. There are of course others, but this does seem to be the most active and friendly of them. If you're looking for me, here's my profile.

Finally, we have folia, "Social garden tracker and organiser"

Folia can best be summed up as "facebook for gardeners"; if you're not blogging at the moment (and don't intend to start) this is probably the best place your can go to start your experiments in online social gardening - it's a pretty handy site even if you do have a blog. The site lets you keep journals of all your plants and how they're getting along, lets you build a wiki which adds to the knowledge of each and every plant on the site and of course share photos of your pride and joy.

Folia needs a number of users in your area before it really starts to come into it's own - for example, if you've got a lot of keen vegetable gardeners near you who are folia users, you'll find the site gives you regular suggestions of what you should be planting and harvesting at various times of the year.

An even more interesting feature is the "swap" functionality, where users are able to send each other spare seed/plant material they happen to have on hand. Just make sure you know what your local (and perhaps international) laws might be before you make use of it.

Should you get confused, there is an excellent help section - and if you get really stuck, the developers are friendly and helpful and pretty quick to respond considering the site is something they do in their spare time! Have a look at their tour (or just sign up and jump in). It certainly doesn't hurt that the whole site feels fresh and modern with a light, attractive colour scheme and sensible navigation. Web 2.0 hits the gardening world! You can find me here.

Now all they need to do is start pulling in blog feeds, and it'll be perfect...