This is for all those who've said, "but plants are so boring! They don't do anything!"
When I noticed Suzel, my pet Phalaenopsis hybrid orchid, was starting to bud I was so excited for the blossoms. It also presented me with an opportunity to share some of the remarkable and dramatic changes of form that plants can undergo during their life cycles (this one being a reproductive stage). Orchids in particular are unique as their blooms are quite specialized and extremely diverse in form and functions.
The Orchidaceae is the largest family of flowering plants on Earth, encompassing 8% of all vascular plants (1). The family contains 25,000 species (1,2). There are so many incredible topics in relation to orchids such as mycorrhizal fungi symbiosis (or potentially parasitism! We still don't know which one it is or if it is determined on a species by species basis!), pollinator specialization, reproduction strategies, epiphyte coping strategies for difficult environments, folklore, traditional medicine and spices, bioprospecting, propagation in captivity, ecosystem restoration and protection... the list goes on.
While I could continue to talk about all these glorious features of orchids, I simply want to foreshadow another post I'm working on about native bee species while also sharing the joy of finally getting the right conditions for this orchid to bloom. As you watch, consider a few things:
1. These flowers are complex structures to serve the simple purpose of attracting pollinators and disseminating/receiving pollen from other plants of the same species. This is in part to increase specialized pollination relationships with a particular species of pollinator to reduce the chance of getting incompatible pollen from a flower of a different species. But it also means that these flowers take a lot of resources and energy to make and then maintain!
2. These flowers are slow to develop. While the video doesn't show the months it took the plant to grow the flower stalk, nor the incredible amount of resources the plant had to stockpile and then use to build these structures and maintain them, the video DOES show the entire floral display taking a full 10 weeks to open fully. Compare and contrast to other species of flowers. How might this be advantageous in terms of pollination? How might this be disadvantageous in terms of pollination? Essentially, what are the trade offs?
3. Observe the complexity of the flower form and consider what parameters a pollinator might have to meet to successfully pollinate said flower? Especially given that most individuals of a species in the wild tend not to clump together, requiring pollinators to seek out these individuals over various ranges.
4. Consider the environmental variables that help the plant decide when to devote its resources to flowering: temperature, light, water. Given that the climate is changing, these environmental factors may become unstable relative to historic norms. Yet, the individual plants will still have mechanisms regulating flowering processes based on those environmental factors, and will respond to those changing environmental factors and not necessarily in the same way its pollinator species will or won't respond to those same changes.
I hope you enjoy watching the orchid's transformation from bud to bloom and appreciate the immense work such development takes. I also hope it gets you thinking about the intimate ways in which pollinators and plants interact and depend on each other for survival, and how a changing environment may impact those dynamics.
References:
The Orchidaceae is the largest family of flowering plants on Earth, encompassing 8% of all vascular plants (1). The family contains 25,000 species (1,2). There are so many incredible topics in relation to orchids such as mycorrhizal fungi symbiosis (or potentially parasitism! We still don't know which one it is or if it is determined on a species by species basis!), pollinator specialization, reproduction strategies, epiphyte coping strategies for difficult environments, folklore, traditional medicine and spices, bioprospecting, propagation in captivity, ecosystem restoration and protection... the list goes on.
While I could continue to talk about all these glorious features of orchids, I simply want to foreshadow another post I'm working on about native bee species while also sharing the joy of finally getting the right conditions for this orchid to bloom. As you watch, consider a few things:
1. These flowers are complex structures to serve the simple purpose of attracting pollinators and disseminating/receiving pollen from other plants of the same species. This is in part to increase specialized pollination relationships with a particular species of pollinator to reduce the chance of getting incompatible pollen from a flower of a different species. But it also means that these flowers take a lot of resources and energy to make and then maintain!
2. These flowers are slow to develop. While the video doesn't show the months it took the plant to grow the flower stalk, nor the incredible amount of resources the plant had to stockpile and then use to build these structures and maintain them, the video DOES show the entire floral display taking a full 10 weeks to open fully. Compare and contrast to other species of flowers. How might this be advantageous in terms of pollination? How might this be disadvantageous in terms of pollination? Essentially, what are the trade offs?
3. Observe the complexity of the flower form and consider what parameters a pollinator might have to meet to successfully pollinate said flower? Especially given that most individuals of a species in the wild tend not to clump together, requiring pollinators to seek out these individuals over various ranges.
4. Consider the environmental variables that help the plant decide when to devote its resources to flowering: temperature, light, water. Given that the climate is changing, these environmental factors may become unstable relative to historic norms. Yet, the individual plants will still have mechanisms regulating flowering processes based on those environmental factors, and will respond to those changing environmental factors and not necessarily in the same way its pollinator species will or won't respond to those same changes.
I hope you enjoy watching the orchid's transformation from bud to bloom and appreciate the immense work such development takes. I also hope it gets you thinking about the intimate ways in which pollinators and plants interact and depend on each other for survival, and how a changing environment may impact those dynamics.
References:
(1) Freudenstein, John V.; van den Berg,
Cássio; Goldman, Douglas H.; Kores, Paul J.; Molvray, Mia; Chase, Mark W. 2003.
An expanded plastid DNA phylogeny of Orchidaceae and analysis of jackknife
branch support strategy. American Journal of Botany vol 91 (1): 149-157.
(2) Albert, Victor A. And Carretero-Paulet,
Lorenzo. 2015. A Genome to Unveil the Mysteries of Orchids. Nature Genetics 47(1):
3-4.
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