The Little Green Orchid That Could

On behalf of all your chlorophyllic friends here at Talking Plants, Happy New Year!

Now I don't mean to twist your arm, but what I'm going to tell you about field botanist Steve Perlman and his search for Platanthera holochila is likely to make a whole lot more sense if you listen to the Morning Edition feature.

It was a habitat kind of day when Steve Perlman led our merry band of plant hunters through the Alaka'i Swamp on Kaua'i, just a dozen miles from Mount Wai'ale'ale, the second wettest place on earth. Our quarry: the fringed orchid.

photo credit: David Bender, National Tropical Botanical Garden

 

It wasn't a very big plant, maybe 20 inches high. The chances of spotting it were absolutely nil. But Steve Perlman of the National Tropical Botanical Garden had seen this rare orchid years ago, before it was dwarfed by knee-high shrubs. So it wasn't entirely miraculous — but it was pretty damn impressive — when he found it growing the middle of a wind-swept, fogged-in swamp.

His timing was perfect; the orchid was ripe for picking. So he carefully removed a couple of pregnant pods for safekeeping, each filled with hundreds of dust-sized seeds.

An ancient plant finds its future in the hands of men like Steve Perlman, who is shown here collecting seed from the fringed orchid. The next day this vial was winging its way to Illinois College where the seeds would be propagated.

photo credit: David Bender, NTBG

 

This fringed orchid was the last of its kind on Kaua'i, and previous attempts to propagate it had failed. Since there could be no certainty that the orchid would live to see another September, the seeds Perlman was collecting this day were crucial to its survival.

One of the main reasons this particular orchid survived was because the enormous bog it was growing in was pig-proof. No lie. Hawaii's wild pigs are like living rototillers; one of the only effective defenses against them is some very serious fencing.

Not an ounce of mean in this man, honest. But a lot of talent. A debt of gratitude to botanist Dave Bender for his many great shots, including this seriously macho self-portrait with fern frond.

photo credit: David Bender, NTBG

 

The next day, Perlman shipped this vial of seed pods to orchid specialist Larry Zettler, professor of biology at Illinois College. (Think: Larry, Larry, he's our man, if he can't do it, NO ONE CAN).

And now, through the magic of radio, you can Be There! when he gets the package.

About six weeks after receiving the little guys, Zettler e-mailed Perlman with good news, saying, "in a nutshell, this has not been an easy orchid to work with, but I am much more optimistic." I wrote to Zettler just the other day. Here's his response:

Hi Ketzel. We sowed the seeds that Steve sent us and they are in incubation. At last check, the embryos appeared OK. Platanthera species in general take considerable time in vitro, especially without fungi, but I'm becoming more convinced that this should be our option with this extremely fastidious species ... I find it ironic that my research with fungi may be taking a back seat with this species in favor of the asymbiotic technique which I had little faith in for the terrestrials. But that's how science sometimes works.

In other words, after intensive work growing terrestrial (ground) orchids in different fungi typically associated with the plant in the wild, Zettler's coming to the conclusion that he might have better luck not using any fungi at all. His findings seem to be consistent with a recent breakthrough in orchid growing at the Atlanta Botanical Garden (beware annoying little "chirps" at this site!).

I have to admit that despite the looks of this, um, shall we say underwhelming orchid, finding the little sucker made for one of those all-time perfect days.

photo credit: David Bender, NTBG

 

So will the little green orchid that could ever grown on Kaua'i again? Chances are pretty damn good, given that there's not a more delicious spot in the world to set down roots if your idea of a very good time is relentless wet, muck and rain.

Yes, you're right, this job definitely has its perks.

photo credit: Clay Trauernicht

 

3:15 PM ET | 12-31-2007 | permalink | comments (12) | e-mail post

Most Forgettable Plants of the Year

Repeat after me: I will never use the following plants, and I will gently but decisively encourage friends and neighbors to follow my lead. Trust me, it's a resolution that takes pretty much NO effort, and is a small step towards creating a safer home and a better world.

OK, maybe not a better world. But it will certainly stop all of us from making it worse.

On second thought, perhaps this should be a group effort. I'll start the New Year's ball rolling, how 'bout you add on ...

FORGETTABLE PLANTS:

Castor Bean Plants (Ricinus communis) with looks that kill

English Ivy (Hedera helix), invasive, unimaginative, overused and — oh yeah! — sometimes toxic

Tree of Heaven (Ailanthus altissima), perhaps the most Orwellian-named plant on the planet

Junipers, first and foremost, because life is too short.

Bittersweet (Celastrus orbiculatus), wanted dead or alive across North America ... and beyond ...

Your turn!

11:46 AM ET | 12-28-2007 | permalink | comments (11) | e-mail post

Rotting Beauty: a Dying Art

Most of the gardens I'm seeing in the neighborhood look like hell, particularly my own. I'm tripping over birch tree limbs and slipping on slimy, unraked leaves. And my banana tree is truly death warmed over.

I typically take offense at its apres-frost limp, brown foliage (bananas die back to the ground here and come up anew in spring). But after seeing Sweeney Todd yesterday — so unimaginably glorious! — I'm feeling a certain fondness towards rot, death, decay.

And so I offer you, on this dark gray Erev Yontif (roughly translated from Hebrew/Yiddish, it means the night before the holiday, in this case Xmas Eve!), a sad and somehow celebratory You Tube video of rotting as art.

11:55 AM ET | 12-24-2007 | permalink | comments (1) | e-mail post

Size Matters - Even To Plants

So do aesthetics and the right ratio of gin vs tonic according to Science Daily. Here's the upshot of some research just in from the John Innes Center in England:

We are now uncovering how the genetic blueprint of a species tightly controls the size of leaves and flowers", says Dr. Michael Lenhard, who led the research.

1:14 PM ET | 12-20-2007 | permalink | comments (0) | e-mail post

Wanna Garden Online?

I've lost about 20 minutes trying to figure out why I'd want to do this and how to describe what it is to you and am bleary eyed from the effort. From what I can gather, it's a site where you can enter data about everything you're growing, track it, share it, picture it...all the kinds of things I don't like to do. But you might, so check out myfolia and let us know if it's useful to you.

By the way, I read about it at GardenPunks, a site I stopped by because -- being well past my own punk years -- I wanted to see what a 21st century punk was.

Answer: EcoPunk.

2:35 AM ET | 12-19-2007 | permalink | comments (0) | e-mail post

Plants on Ice

Listen up, friends -- It's now that dead, dried and dessicated flower time of year and we need more TP Flickr Pix friends before some of us get really depressed. We need colors, shapes, lights, action! So skip the holiday shopping (just buy your friends memberships to local enviro orgs, they'll hate you for it), and go snap us some iced flowers and berry frappes...

From what I've heard, the first snow in the greater D.C. area didn't last long, but TP member Camera Slayer (evidentally, he kills a lot of them) was poised and ready.

photo credit: Camera Slayer

 

Truth is we gardeners don't have all that much work to do right now (as if I've done a thing in the last eleven months; this was the Year of the Ruptured Disc), so this is a splendid time to look a bit more closely at things we missed all year, and indulge in the smaller moments that rushed right by during the growing season.

At my place, for instance, it's all about bark and bones -- as in, the dog's soggy stuffed animals and my garden's design bones that are in need of serious chiropractic care.

If you're a TP regular, you've seen this aster before (scroll down page). Our friend in New England, Christine 4nier, sent in a purpleacious shot this past summer.

photo credit: Christine 4nier

 

Winter is also a superb time of year to have a Bad Excuse For A Garden exhibition here on TP...and I know just the "ornamental" cabbage planting I'm going to include. So while you're out walking the dog please scour the neighborhood for any amusing disasters. If I get enough pix that are truly bad enough, I'll put up a show.

Stopped in its tracks while blowing in the wind, this rudbeckia relative got caught up in last week's Oklahoma City ice storm.

photo credit: Clarissa Sharp

 

12:00 PM ET | 12-16-2007 | permalink | comments (3) | e-mail post

Hawaii's Prettiest Pests

OK all you botanical xenophobes (and I mean that in the nicest possible way)...

As a preview to a Morning Edition series coming to a public radio station hear you, Talking Plants is taking a sneak peek at the plant pests of HAWAI'I. I figure some of you are headed there in the next few months, so this may be my best chance to pack another agenda into your luggage.

One of the prettiest pests on Kaua'i is the so-called lady's eardrops, Fuchsia boliviana, which started showing up in the 1960's and has now made it onto Hawaii's list of Most Invasive Horticultural Plants. Given that it likes life in moist forests, I'd say it's found its niche.

photo credit: Ketzel Levine

 

Folks who visit Hawai'i (and we are many in the Pacific NW) often come back raving about the state's incredible flora. And sure, it's pretty. But most of what people rave about are introduced invasives that have gone hog wild.

When I first looked up into a lush, green Kaua'i hillside, I was overwhelmed by the plant with the large, glossy leaves. Overwhelmed turns out to be how I'd now describe what schefflera has done to scads of the islands.

photo credit:Scott Kinmartin

 

An appropriately unflattering pix of the banana poka, a variety of passion vine, that has become Hawaii's answer to kudzu.

photo credit: Ketzel Levine, NPR

Many of the "Hawaiian" plants that turn heads -- the bold yellow ginger, the crimson African tulip trees, the multi-colored lantana -- are not merely non-native, they are trouble. And that includes everyone's favorite houseplant, the schefflera, a greedy plant also known as the octopus tree that has undoubtedly snatched a few extra acres of Kaua'i since you first started reading this post.

Other smothering lovers include the shrubby princess flower (anyone from the Bay Area knows that purple-flowered Brazilian beautygirl, Tibouchina urvilleana)...and the bad bad bad, die! die! die! banana poka (link has video), alias Passiflora mollisssima, a rapacious passion fruit vine (yes, that's redundant).

"So what's an apolitical fun-loving tourist supposed to do about all this?" you may ask. Support thems that give a damn, I answer. Dig deep when you visit Hawaii's botanic gardens and arboreta and leave a generous donation, 'cause it ain't cheap to keep paradise under control.

Behold the old axiom, beauty's in the eye of the beholder. What does it do to your perception of the Kaua'i coastline once I tell you this lush green foliage is all invasive flora?

photo credit: Ketzel Levine, NPR

 

3:16 PM ET | 12- 9-2007 | permalink | comments (5) | e-mail post