My Year of Orchids: Orchid pheromones

There’s a huge amount written about the way orchid flowers produce pheromones. And all this writing and research is focused on the way orchids “fool” pollinators into visiting them, and doing the orchids’ reproductive behest. But wow. Not a word seems to have been written about the other universe of orchid pheromones.

I first suspected that my orchids were using aromas to attract other organisms when I saw an ant marching back and forth on the unopened bud of Acampe papillosa, a good three weeks before the flower opened. That ant sensed something and was there for a reason. How could a human tell what that was?

Eventually Acampe papillosa opened her flowers and as tiny as they were, they were mesmerizing. That is they hypnotized me, her human steward-slash-slave. I came back again and again asking myself. What is this aroma doing to my brain? I hadn’t figured it out more than a month later, when the sixth or seventh flower petered out. But I did notice that the capsule where the flowers had attached was swollen, probably with growing seeds. Something had been accomplished.

Here’s another little piece of the puzzle. Several times a week when I mist my slatted baskets I disturb a certain moth that’s been sitting there. You’ll think I’m weird but the moth looks like a tiny miniature chicken hatching her eggs. Don’t know what the moths are doing there, it’s always this same small dusky species. But I do know that moths are very strongly influenced by pheromones. It is central to their reproductive process. In my case they’re not pollinating the orchids because there aren’t any flowers, or haven’t been. But the moths have come to visit and “nest” because I assume, something is attracting them.

I’ve been thinking a lot about orchids and their many partnerships. Fungi, insects, other plants. All kinds of organisms are attracted to orchids and help them develop a thrumming ecosystem of success. Thing is, we humans don’t pick up the trail.

Is it any surprise? Think about the sounds a dog can hear, way out of our range. Or picture truffles and trained pigs. The truffles in the ground produce an aroma no human can trace. Why can’t Orchids produce molecules that we don’t sense with our limited olfactory senses?

So I did a little sniffing experiment and went around to the different orchids I could reach. Acampe papillosa, her flowers long gone, did produce a fragrance at once subtle, indescribable, and mystifying. Must go back for more. Almost scary was the odor of Maxillaria arachnitiflora, who hasn’t been feeling her best. The past week or so she began to develop yellowing leaves and since then she’s shed a few. The process seems to have been halted but her smell! Do you know the smell of steamed kasha (buckwheat groats)? That’s the best I can do to describe it but with deeper base notes, ketones perhaps, and a heady finish that has me coming back for more.

Whatever she’s doing, Maxillaria is sending a message. Not sure to whom or for what, but I imagine I’ll find out.

My Year of Orchids: No boring orchids

It’s not just that I’m lazy. It’s late morning and I’m about halfway done with watering but I had pulled out my phone to take some pictures and this reminded me. A friend the other day called Phalaenopsis orchids “boring” and I have to say I disagree. Yes they are supermarket orchids. Yes they are hard to kill. Yes they are manufactured for consumption like so many widgets. But they are not boring.

I stuck one in the crook of a thin tree a few weeks ago when she was done blooming. Within days I saw she had set up a new inflorescence bud on the old flower stalk. That’s coming along nicely but the amazing thing I want to talk about for a moment is the interplay between her roots and one of her large leaves. I’ve written a bit about root-leaf interactions, especially the way the roots of so many species seem to grow upward along the middle crease in the leaves. I’ve also written about how orchids develop secret spaces with their bodies that collect moisture, nutrients, microorganisms and larger organisms like ants and moths. This was a new one though.

So this orchid has developed a concave shelter over its roots, the dome-like ceiling being one of its larger leaves. I felt in there one day. It was more than solid. It was hard as a rock. Those roots are packed in and for all I know attached to the bottom of the leaf. They’re pretty cool to observe and they’re a great way to conserve moisture. Amazing to see what a supermarket orchid can do when left to its own devices in nature

My Year of Orchids: A floral conundrum

Why did orchids species (not hybrids) evolve flowers? For us or for their own reproduction? Easy answer right? It’s funny though that we are so focused on orchid flowers. Not just us amateurs. Darwin was transfixed by their complexity and ingenuity, from which he inferred many of his findings on the evolutionary process.

I have to admit I was pretty excited when I saw the flower of Miltonia spectabilis start to emerge. The pictures I had seen explained the “spectacle” of this flower, which was made even cooler for me by its swelling and pushing through a much-imbricating stalk. At first purplish and droopy like a newborn human baby, today the flower presented itself in its full glory. Only one problem. It was facing “backwards” into the tree it is mounted on.

Backwards is a little judgy of me isn’t it? After all I’m always preaching about leaving orchids in trees instead of pots, letting them establish the way they want, and not fretting about directionality or orientation. Feeling like a big hypocrite I contemplated turning the flower around so it would display outward. But let’s face it. What would twisting the flower stalk do for the plant? Probably kill the flower.

So. Deep breath. Trying to find satisfaction with the whole plant and how well it’s done since August. Celebrating less the flower than the flowering. And waiting eagerly for upcoming blooms that orient themselves the “right” way!

My Year of Orchids: Jewel orchids

Jewel orchid is the name given to a bunch of different genera of small, soil-growing orchids. They are generally grown more for the beauty of their leaves than their flowers. But if you know me you know it doesn’t matter. I grow all my orchids for the joy of watching them survive and thrive “in the wild,” without pots, shelter, or other accoutrements of civilization. The jewel orchids are a little different for me because they do require soil. They are not epiphytes like the rest of my babies.

So, a bit of a conundrum. How to plant these creatures? Yi Wen gave me some of hers that were growing rife and raucous in a pot. Out of six plants she cut (actually tore out of the pot) none had roots. About half of them survived and are sporting large swelling terminal buds that should flower any day. These plants were pretty big. Bigger than your hand let’s say. Then I got the tiny jewel orchids from my friend Ellen at Olympic Orchids. She’s doing a lot of perfume research these days, based on the orchids, so I wasn’t sure if she was in the live plant business. A few phone calls and emails back and forth and we were in business.

I ordered one jewel orchid from Ellen and she substituted a couple more for a species that was out of stock. Man they were small. Maybe the size of your thumb. I was happy at least to plant them on a damp cool day and thankful for the dewy, foggy mornings we’ve been having. But I did despair slightly at the possibility that these babies might just disappear. They were so small and, well, filmy. As in thin.

Back in my postage stamp sized garden in Cambridge Massachusetts, where squirrels did most of the replanting for me and where, looking down at the soil I could easily expect to see a cigarette butt tossed into what my neighbors considered as my “weed patch,” I developed a strategy for planting the delicate ones. The soil there was sandy like here in Florida and like our sea air, there was a presence of salt, although there it came from the tons slathered on the streets and sidewalks during winter.

I had several goals in my planting method. First, I wanted to increase the available organic matter in the immediate vicinity of the plant without plain thumping it into topsoil, which would attract squirrels. Second, I wanted to keep the ambient moisture around the new plant relatively high without overwatering. Third, I wanted to camouflage the plant from squirrels, not only from an olfactory level (no topsoil) but also visually. The less disturbed my planting site appeared, I reasoned, the less likely it was to arouse rodent curiosity.

Oh yes we have those rodents here too. So for my jewel orchids the goals can be said to be identical. So how do I do my planting? I put the jewels on the shady side of large rocks to keep their moisture up and protect them from the sun, which is getting hotter and more demanding every day. I made sure there were some leaves in the vicinity and a few twigs, as well as spare sprigs of sphagnum, which they came packed in. Just a few sprigs, not a bunch. I made sure to mist every day, maybe twice a day if it’s hot.

So far so good and I’ll let you know if anyone survives!

My Year of Orchids: spiders in my orchids

Yes!!!! This means my orchid clumps are little places of life, breathing enough water vapor and oxygen to attract bugs and their predators, the spiders. If you’ve ever seen the way a spider web traps moisture then you can imagine how happy I am. It’s as if another moist biofilm of protection is being established around the orchids. Not to mention the dead bugs that will be dropping by.

So how many partnerships can we reckon for an orchid? The tree it sits on, companion plants like bromeliads and air plants, its internal cellular bacteria like mitochondria and chloroplasts, bacteria and fungi that live on its surface and also harbor themselves in the roots, mycorrhizal fungi, insect pollinators, ants, which accomplish just about everything for the plant, the occasional moth I see flying out when I mist, and now the spiders. A long list by any account.

I begin to wonder how much the orchid is a passive participant in its surroundings versus an active player. What occult aromas is it giving off to attract these partners? How is it building a nest for insects to hide in? Where does the boundary between the orchid and its environment lie? I’m startng to think the orchid, something like a spider, is sending out lots of loose nets that draw in the resources it requires. Sort of strange when I read people are worried about spiders in or around their orchids. Seems pretty beneficial to me.

My Year of Orchids: More experimenting with fertilizer

I broke down today and bought some epsom salt (magnesium sulfate). “Why?” You might ask. I’ve been reading a bit on this substance which has, it seems, no substantive orchid research behind it! Kind of interesting.

But as a botanist I know that magnesium is the central ion of every chlorophyll molecule. It is primally, absolutely essential to photosynthesis. And many of my orchids have been yellowing, meaning they are doing less photosynthesis than perhaps they should. A signal perhaps that they are lacking chlorophyll or not synthesizing chlorophyll as they must, possibly because of a lack of magnesium with which to build the chlorophyll. Incidentally. And I hope you are interested in this as much as me. Or at least a little bit:

The biosynthetic pathways of hemoglobin and chlorophyll are identical, identical! for the first twenty or so steps. Later iron is substituted in hemoglobin for the magnesium in chlorophyll. These essential molecules, hemoglobin (in us) and chlorophyll (in plants) are not-distant cousins.

Anyway. I’ve noticed those orchids going yellow. First was Miltonia spectabilis, which is supposed to yellow when happy (spoiler alert some of her yellow buds turned purple today. I think I may be a papa soon! Flowers??) but others went yellow too. My browning Broughtonia looked great, then asked me not to water her, and yesterday, scandalously, dropped a leaf. I was I admit in bit of a panic.

So now with warmer days coming on I figured even the shyest of orchids must be getting ready to live their best life. Why not help them accomplish it with magnesium, that all important building block of chlorophyll and, incidentally, coenzyme to so many metabolic pathways in the plant cell. Let’s see where they go with it.

My Year of Orchids: Growing every which way

I don’t know how to say it any other way. The orchid roots have gone wild. Cattleya labiata is a good example. She has sent roots pretty much radially across her tree branch. I think if you accounted for the topography up there you could map her root growth pretty much like the outward aiming spokes of a wheel. Great way for her to explore, build territorial rights, and find sources of nutrition, light and water.

Pretty much the same time I noticed this crazy root behavior I observed several other things about labiata. She is glued solid into her tree. Rain and wind pose no challenge. It’s really like she’s “one” with the tree. She has successfully built a crypt of roots beneath her to store moisture and nutrients, and to invite geckos, ants, other insects, and countless microbes in that cool protected space. Cattleya labiata has also grown perceptibly. Her leaves have gotten wider, harder, and much longer. And she’s kind of hanging out of her perch. In search of more light? A random leaning? Time will tell.

Cattleya labiata is not the only one I noticed today. It seems that winter is past and we are experiencing mild days and moist, sometimes densely foggy mornings. If you were an epiphyte I don’t think you could ask for anything nicer. And so my orchids, bromeliads, tillandsias and epiphytic cacti have responded beautifully. Even noticed today an air plant whose leaf tips are becoming just the slight blush of purplish. Subtle yet eye popping!

When we lived in Cambridge Massachusetts I doted over my tiny garden. Just ten feet wide and barely thirty feet long. In winter it was bleak, empty above except for branches and stray leaves of the season before. A few bulbs would start in the spring, following the example of the early blooming witch hazel and my lusty trusty hellebores. By late June it was a solid green, eight or ten feet tall.

I used to ponder. That mass of green, those cubic yards of green developing over four months or so represented not only plant growth. It signified an explosion of bacteria that live in the plants, specifically mitochondria and photosynthetic chloroplasts. All of this had to be choreographed, regulated, and controlled in the plant body at the cellular level, and also in the collective plant community.

Here in St. Petersburg Florida in early February the dead of winter has passed. I noticed a lull in the plants. Two, actually. The fall into hibernation was slow and bumpy. I struggled for weeks figuring out when to water orchids that “should” have been sleeping. Now with the week or two of winter over, there were a couple of days of lag before the orchids woke up. Now I think they are fully present, recharged and ready to take off. They all seem to be growing every which way.