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cedar-glade · 5 years

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The Abyss of Diversity, an Ecological Mess, and A Potential First Step to Fixing It and Opening the Door to A Plethora of Information.

One plant family, above all others, from the monocot group is responsible for the largest removal of plant blindness than any other family. It’s a craze of love and sometimes even addiction. It can even cause ecological disasters from how far we take things with these monocots.

When one walks into a grocery store you may occasionally notice the orchids in floral section and become the casual observer. Or you may have gone to a conservatory/greenhouse and observed some orchids as you were enjoying the flora. You most likely associated the idea of an orchid flower with something relatively showy with glossy leaves and you may have even noticed that floral diversity with orchids are all across the board. This observation is a good observation as the orchid family, Orchidaceae, has incredible floral diversity, from showy to inconspicuous, caused by nearly every evolutionary pressure you can imagine.

The evolutionary subsets that involve coevolution could take hundreds of lifetimes to even scratch the surface of what could be known. Fungal experts, cell biologists, biochemical specialists, and ecological and evolutionary ecologists are just a small group of people that sometimes get stuck specializing in a single species discourse and they aren’t even botanists.

Besides the intensely frigid zones of the planet/ oceans, you can observe orchids in almost every other environment. For example: Eulophia petersii grows in the arid to semi arid regions of Southern Africa where it can experience what would normally seem like extreme bouts of drought and do well. Orchidaceae is also considered to be the largest current family(20k natural sp. with 100hybrid cv. being developed daily.) and the second largest natural family. We see new species discovered almost yearly; with this said, a very important notion of their diversity goes unnoticed by many people on a daily basis that should be just as celebrated as their floral/vegetative/ and niche diversity. What I am suggesting is something that can be a little matted down or even underground to what we readily observe. Its what makes the family possible to begin with; what I mean is the roots(pun intended). From macro-morphology to ultrastructural morphology the roots of orchids can be insanely unique and very important.

How deep does the diversity go? Aside from primary shape, location and function of orchid roots; the diversity of associated Mycorrhiza coupled with unique root bacteria available within’ and outside of the root may seem almost unfathomable when looking at extremely active and diverse ecosystems. The interactions and ecology between each species present is even more unreachable. It doesn’t help that transplanting species is in large enough numbers is impossible and ecologically damaging/ unethical. It seems like our only method for growing orchids in bulk involves our species of interest being either a seed-agar flask or a root-parenchyma tissue culture flask from very sterile lab conditions, the average person without these methods has to rely on potential divisions or kiki to even get anywhere. With these methods you can’t get a full story at all and it feels like an untouchable issue; however, this untouchable issue is beginning to be resolved in some cases.

First, before I go any further in what I am about to attempt to explain, I’d like to introduce some functional/common morphology and introduction before a break away into resolving the issue mentioned above.

Orchids are highly specialized, as I mentioned above, and so are their components. Just like many other organisms, survival and fitness are the prime focus and getting to disjunct populations and travelling is necessary to find suitable habitat. The majority of Orchid species, like any other large family on the planet, have evolved multiple ways of moving their seeds from location to location. The most common way to move seeds is to have wind dispersal as the primary mechanism. We see this, wind dispersal, as a major component with other large, wide spread families( Asteraceae, Poaceae, Cyprussaceae). Orchids have also found success in resource allocation, remove the nutrient layer of endosperm, make seeds airborn by flattening them and making them small enough to be carried on the breeze or birds wings, and because endosperm takes energy and is no longer being used it’ll go to seed numbers. The only issue is that when a seed lands with know tissue dedicated to primary germination, how will it grow? The simple truth is having chemical signalling and thin seed coat prone to fungal interactions. Orchids spread seeds during periods that promote the hydroponic soil surfaces to be inundated with water and motile oospores. Oospores can change direction based on chemical signalling, once these ambient Oospores are produced they will travel to these seeds and embed through the thin coat into the initial cells. At first, in many cases, these seeds are specifically useless to the fungi that have attached; but, in many cases, eventually symbiotic interaction will be established along with the initiation of photosynthesis. I say “in many cases” because, we do have our sections of mycoheterotrophs that essentially feed off of saprotrophic and heterotrophic fungi( Some coral roots exhibit this as a function.). Little is known at the moment about these chemical signals and more fungal allocation in primary germination seems to be associated with what is ambient. We see ambient germination in epiphytic members of orchidaceae often, some require dual specialized fungal associations, fungus associations with australian ferns and Arachnorchis behrii is an example of this. Either way the reliance of fungal interactions is key in primary germination outside of in-vitro- asymbiotic flasking environments. Once embedded or coated, depending on specificity (arbuscular-endo-mycosymbiont or exo-mycosymbiont), we get different forming protocorms in each species.

What is a protocorm? It is a pre-functioning seedling that begins secondary sell differentiation in a protected environment, creating organs while relying on another organism for aid in survival essentially. Once enough symbiotic associations are finalized, or somewhat finalized, and organ growth is past it’s primary stage while conditions are right, the protocorm will form what we know as the functional orchid. This means that roots and some form of energy storage organ are functioning. In some cases, we see just thickened roots as a main storage source and functional unit, corkscrew/ghost and coralloides are examples. Other species are divided into colloquial groupings, such as polypoidal -many feet and monopodial- single foot orchids. The polypoidal groupings are usually rhizomatous or have a thickened stollon where we se monopodial groupings with canes( elongate thickened stem like organs) or pseudobulbs (stout/bulb like thickened leaf meristem topped organs that are more closely associated with a traditional stem.) These obviously are not the limit to the storage diversity by any means, as storage cells can form a number of specialized organs. Valemen layer, the outermost sheathing layer of most orchid roots that are found briefly behind the root tip, can contain enlarged sink cells for water storage although the layers primary task is water absorption and protecting the photosynthetic root layer beneath and with terrestrials it can add a layer of security to its fungal and bacterial symbionts. Many times if need be, plants, without a proper long term storage organ, may revert pack to a protocorm state until good conditions and less soil compaction are a transparent factor in the environment; this concept explains why some large individual Cypripedium spp. will “disappear” for years and then reappear to bloom years later, relying on only symbiont stimuli and energy sequestering.

With the basic concepts of morphology down, we can move onto the issue at hand involving root-symbiont research. Obviously, with so much diversity and rarity poaching will occur. Not only poaching as an issue; but, improper ecological education, geological/botanical blindness, and failure to manage land properly to the point of mass ecosystem collapse has lead to a decline in population growth in many orchid species. So, how do we quickly restore order and mitigate damage for the future of Orchidaceae and it’s ecological interactions when it’s highly invasive to do transplanting(not to mention almost all transplants of an established plant fail)? Well, their are a couple new methods and protocol that may lead to answers. Many colleges with decent culturing programs and genetic programs are working with resource branches in the government to identify the symbionts present and necessary by species. There are tons of ethical codes involved, on a region to government basis; but, if you can get involved with local orchid societies, governments interested in ecological preservation, and biological research departments you can help reverse a lot of damage potentially. There are two main methods of gaining this knowledge: one major one is zooplankton net bound in-situ(at native site) seed germination/protocorm removal that involves barcoding cultures after the fungus has been probed out in lab, once probed, it is cryogenically frozen for later culture libraries. A good example of one such organization doing this is The Smithsonian Institute North American Orchid Conservation Center. The second, is live root tissue sampling which also requires extremely delineate protocol and membership to specific groups that can give permits. In my State, the ODNR and EPA is working with many universities and even orchids societies, like CGOS and NOPES, to set up a standard interface in ethical collection as well as permits. In order to access these permits you do have to be part of one of these groups and be trained in protocol.

Sources/ further reading:

First Photo Diagram:

Second Photo: Liparis liliifolia My photo

Third: NOPES counting and photographing a roadside orchid population. My photo.

“In situ protocol at field sites for terrestrial orchids”

“Modern and current tech in seed crop production, in vitro seed germ protocol”

“In situ concepts behind terrestrial orchid dust seeds seno latu”

“China, in-situ germination and restoration”

“On field site germ”

“In-situ and ex-situ baiting techniques with orchids”

“Perspective on seed protocorm development”

“Understanding seed to protocorm development in orchids”

“On Protocorm. Cyp. kentuckiense, research project.”

“Dist. of Pink Spider Orchid”

“Orchid-fungus fidelity: A marriage meant to last?”

“Physiological diversity of orchids”

“On Orchid Storage Anatomy”

“Endosymbiosis, Orchids: Endosymbiotic Bacteria Within Orchid Mycorrhizal Fungi”

“Orchids, Fungi, and Symbiosis”

“Bacteria Associated with Orchid Roots”

“Symbiotic in vitro seed propagation of Dendrobium: fungal and bacterial partners and their influence on plant growth and development.”

“Bacteria associated with orchid roots and microbial production of auxin”

“Asymbiotic and symbiotic seed germination of Eulophia alta (Orchidaceae)—preliminary evidence for the symbiotic culture advantage”

“The velamen protects photosynthetic orchid roots against UV‐B damage, and a large dated phylogeny implies multiple gains and losses of this function during the Cenozoic”

“Non-mycorrhizal endophytic fungi from orchids”

“The importance of associations with saprotrophic non-Rhizoctonia fungi among fully mycoheterotrophic orchids is currently under-estimated: novel evidence from sub-tropical Asia”

“Ectomycorrhizal Inocybe species associate with the mycoheterotrophic orchid Epipogium aphyllum but not its asexual propagules.”

“Genetic diversity patterns of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi associated with the mycoheterotroph Arachnitis uniflora Phil. (Corsiaceae)”

#orchids #orchidaceae #botany #concepts #ecological restoration #ecology

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