Orchids

Dactylorhiza tubers

Got up early this morning to try to pot up the remaining Dacts I had sowed last year. Their root tubers were well developed, on the whole about 25 - 35mm long with some 50 - 70mm and some tiny ones which don't seem to have grown at all. I potted them up in the sylvamix - seramis - grit mix, and added rootgrow to some (mainly because I ran out, but it will allow some comparison at least).

Asymbiotic seed sowing failures

I will be having a big seed sowing session next week and prior to this i thought I should check flasks I had sowed earlier in the year which had not germinated yet, and the batch of medium I had made ahead of the next sowing. Both had been in the fridges at home and at work for a couple of weeks. 

One of the pots at work had some mould growing inside, which surprised me since i had sowed it in March and it had not shown any signs. I was worried that maybe all of them woudl be, and that rechilling woudl release a plague of spores on my poorly sterilised flasks. It turned out that this was not the case and only one of my recent pre sowing flasks was similarly affected, so 2 jars out about 20, or 10%, which I think is reasonable although not great...so far. More may emerge later. I am still surprised by this long incubation period. 

The little while flecks are patches of mould. The flask on the left is an Anacamptis laxiflora sowing from March. The other is a blank flask from a couple of weeks ago. 

I was even more surprised when two other jars from the back of the fridge were pulled out partially frozen. They had been touching the back wall which may explain it but I am now worried that that fridge is just far too cold. I'm going to have to get some thermometers.

Ice crystals in the flasks. The one on the right is an Ophrys apifera flask the other is just medium. I will try the O apifera and see what happens, the other i will dispose of and start again, along with the two infected flasks. 

At the same time I examined the cardboard seed sowing method experiment - no sign of any development there either. 

Thank god I have a load of Dacts to sow - they'll keep me entertained over winter!

 

New tubers plus old tubers

Old tubers: 

Ophrys spegodes starting to sprout but in need of repotting

Anacamptis laxiflora starting to sprout but in need of repotting

New tubers (from Laneside)

Ophrys bombyliflora

Ophrys tenthredinifera

Orchis simia

Orchis militaris x 5

Anacamptis morio 

 

I tried to find some ordinary bee orchids but they seem impossible to get hold of now. 

In addition I have my Dacts which I will start to repot over the next couple of weeks. 

Sowing orchid seeds on cardboard

I have been spending far too much time browsing the fantastic hardy orchid growing resource at http://forum.terrorchid.org/index.php recently and one of the most interesting threads I came across was a discussion about germinating some types of orchid seed on cardboard. This is a tried and tested method used in Japan for growing a limited range of species, which has the benefit of being relatively simple since it seems that it can be done aseptically.

My attempt so far is shown here: 

http://meadowmaker.typepad.co.uk/photos/sowing_orchid_seed_on_car/index.html

My queries at the moment are that the little trays are sitting in a soup of compost tea plus inorganic soil residue which is surely bound to go rancid. One of the contributors used inorganic bonsai soils which are acidic and so prevent this happening. The nearest I could manage was a mixture of crushed perlite and seramis. I am not sure how using acidic soils works with D fuchsii seed but it seems to! I have used what I had available, which was a mixture of D umbrosa and D praetermissa seed harvested from my own plants. How well these will fare only time will tell...

Besides the potentially rancid primordial soup I have another potential problem - everyone seems to suggest using food packaging to contain the cardboard, since it drains. Maybe this is related to my first concern, maybe I need to throw away the soup that has gathered in the outer tray. Or maybe i need to lift the smaller trays up.

My final point of confusion is that I always thought that Dact seed needed some treatment to break down the seed coat, which this seems to conflict with... 

Anacamptis laxiflora seedlings

I took the three jars of Anacamptis laxiflora seedlings I replated a couple of months ago out of the draw and they are doing well, if a little cramped and spindly. I am not really sure where to put them now, I put them in a plunge bed in the greenhouse under the bench but I am worried about the temperature so might need to find another spot.

Lizard Orchids Success!

Another gap in my schedule today allowed me another chance to find the Lizard Orchids at the Devil's Dyke - this time approached from the Newmarket end. Very eaily found after a half hour walk (at my meandering pace...) the first few were most easily located by the amount of crushed vegetation around them:

 

However ten yards on there were more, and better specimens. I can only assume that the photographer lay down for the prize winning shot and having bagged the images left without even bothering to see if there were any more. I managed to get all the images i needed either from the path or by very carefully walking across the turf. I am happy with the results considering it was a wet, windy day!

See more here:http://meadowmaker.typepad.co.uk/photos/orchids/index.html 

Lizard orchid mission failure

I managed to get a rare couple of hours free today and so dashed out to see if I could find the famous lizard orchids of the Devils Dyke. I walked for several hours from Reach to the A14 crossing point. I managed to find quite a few Pyramidal Orchids, plus many other calcareous grassland plants, but no sign of the Lizard Orchids. It thought it was strange, perhaps I'd left it too late. When I got home I did a bit of googling and after about 5mins it became clear that I'd been looking in the wrong part of the 7.5 mile long earthwork. The place I should have looked is next to the Racecourse. I might get another chance this year but it is unlikely. At least I will know where to go next year!

Anacamptis laxiflora ok

I went to tip out the soil from the A laxiflora pot today and out plopped a big thumb sized tuber! Sadly I seem to have damaged it while excavating the pot. I was quite surprised at how deep it was - a good 6cm down. I cleaned it up, treated it with some sulphur powder and repotted it. I have watered it and I will let it dry out a bit and put it in a bag till September.

Orchid update July 2012

The Dactylorhiza seedlings I have grown from seed have survived and are slowly growing on successfully. I will need to start planning for the next stage in their development as autumn looms. The D. fuchsii plant which I managed to overwinter has started to bloom but very weakly, although I did split it after re-potting it so I have two small plants.

The magnificent D umbrosa which bloomed so well last month has been successfully pollinated and the seed capsules are developing well. I want to make sure I don't lose such a gorgeous plant. The D praetermissa plant I purchased from John Haggar in April also did well, although it did suffer from a bad blackfly infestation, but not as bad as that which effectively destroyed the flower spike of the Gymnadaena conopsis which in the end I cut off. Hopefully the plant will survive.

The 'calcareous' wicking bed, with the various Dact seedlings, D fuchsii plants from last year, D. praetermissa blooming Gymnadaena faring poorly.

D praetermissa

The two D maculata plants purchased from Jeff Hutchings have also done ok, mainly just sitting there as have the two tiny Epipactis palustris plants I got from Richard Manuel. No flowers though. The best flowering spike (apart from the D umbrosa however) was the mystery D praetermissa / purpurella from Jeff H. Not sure if he is correct in the id I will have another look but I will definately try to get some seed from it.

Acid wicking bed - the only orchid blooming is the mystery Dact!

Tonight while potting up I discovered I'd lost two plants, the Anacamptis morio I got in April and the Anacamptis laxiflora which flowered so beautifully earlier in the year, which I was really gutted about. I wasn't really sure that I'd done the right thing with it and obviously I watered it too much - whenever I have seen it it has been in wet meadows but it was obviously a mistake to make this assumption. Ironically this is the only non Dact species I seem to have germinated successfully. In fact they are now looking as though they might need to be brought into weak light.

Dactylorhiza umbrosa - what a star!

The exotic Dactylorhiza umbrosa I bought last month has now bloomed, and what a fabulous flower it is.

As befits a real star I used a bit of lash! Specifically three off camera flashes and a white background  (a small white box) with a 105mm macro lens to really highlight the detail of the flowers and the long elegant bracts. 

While some of the highlights have blown I am quite pleased with the results. What I really want to try, once the flower is in full bloom, in a couple of days, is to use the full size lightbox at work (usuallu used for taking pictures of decidedly less beautiful lumps of recycled plastic) and try to capture the whole plant under colour corrected daylight bulbs. But this was quite a good result. 

Unfortunately I have no other Dacts (or even orchids...) flowering at the moment to try to cross polinate and create a hybrid. I will try to hand pollinate to see if i can get some seed however!