Small flowered yellow lady slipper orchid
Photo Credit: Dr. Brad Wilson DVM (Photo used with permission)
Photo Credit: Dr. Brad Wilson DVM (Photo used with permission)
In Spotlight: Native Orchids
"Whatever your reason for being there, the outdoors is a world apart, a creation unique with its own colors, its special music, and its matchless variety of fragrance. No human paintbrush could ever duplicate its beauty, no musical instrument its blended symphonies, and there is no way to match its fragrance with chemicals."
-Charlie Elliott
-Charlie Elliott
|
This edition of Wildlife In Spotlight features native orchids. It may come as a surprise to some of us that a number of species of native orchids have been poached to near extinction. It is hard to believe that one of the world’s most exotic flower families shares some of the same threats as tigers, elephants, and rhinos. I recently caught up with Mr. Matt Richards, Manager of Conservation Horticulture for the Atlanta Botanical Garden to talk about his work related to orchid conservation. In this interview, Mr. Richards explains the complex yet intriguing relationship these plants share with other organisms within an ecosystem, the challenges of collecting seeds from the wild and habitat restoration along with many fascinating facts about orchids. I would like to thank Mr. Richards for making time for this interview and for sharing his insights on orchid conservation.
The interview has been formatted in the following order: • Introduction: Interesting facts about orchids. • Conservation: Threats that decimate the orchid population, the process of seed collection, lab propagation and habitat restoration. The interview has been edited and condensed. |
Mr. Matt Richards
Manager, Conservation Horticulture
Ayesha Siraj
Interviewer
January 12, 2018
Manager, Conservation Horticulture
Ayesha Siraj
Interviewer
January 12, 2018
Introduction: Interesting facts about orchids.
Ayesha: Thank you so much for agreeing to do this interview; I appreciate it.
Mr. Richards: You're welcome.
Ayesha: What is your scope of work here at the Atlanta Botanical Garden [ABG]? Are you associated with research, propagation, out planting, or all the above?
Mr. Richards: My job title is Manager of Conservation of Horticulture. My team grows all the plants for the conservation program and our conservation safeguarding nursery in Gainesville, Georgia. I am part of the conservatory department, which houses all our living collections of conservation value. I specialize in propagation of orchids. At the lab we propagate a lot of the plants for our collections, displays, distribution to partnering institutions and conservation efforts.
We have a conservation team that works on research, but I don't conduct a whole lot of research. I have been fortunate enough to co-author research papers and work directly with academic partners, but I'm not bound by academia. I locate plants, I collect seeds of plants, and I assist partners in habitat restoration and management.
Ayesha: How long have you been involved with the orchid conservation program?
Mr. Richards: I've been involved with the conservation work for almost 10 years.
Ayesha: Since you specialize with orchids how about we start with you helping us understand what makes an orchid an orchid? How is it different from the other plants and what is so unique about them?
Mr. Richards: The flowers have bilateral symmetry which means if you are looking at it and you put a vertical line straight up and down through the middle you would have a mirror image on both sides. They have three sepals and three petals. One of the petals is usually modified into what we call a lip. That is the big showy part of the orchid and is usually evolved to be a landing pad for an insect. Another interesting feature that differentiates an orchid from another plant say a lily is, lilies have their pollen massed at the end of the anthers so when you rub the anther the pollen grains come off of it. But an orchid consolidates all that pollen into what we call a pollinium. Depending on the orchid it can contain 2, 4, 8 and sometime more of these masses called pollinia under an anther cap. When an insect lands the pollinia gets stuck to the back of an insect and that is how it gets carried to the next flower. Another thing that makes orchids fairly unique is most orchids have a very specific relationship with a mycorrhizal fungi; sometimes a very specific fungus to that species of orchid. The fungi infect the orchid seed and forms pelotons inside. Then the orchid slowly digests the carbon from this fungus to get its food to germinate.
We're sitting in a lab because we grow orchids here asymbiotically. What that means is we grow it without that fungus. So we sterilize our seeds put it on a modified tissue culture media that provides water, carbon, nutrients and sugars allowing the seed to imbibe in a sterile environment and germinate under lights. So, we kind of go around that process that happens in nature.
Ayesha: But in the wild, orchid seeds share a very specific symbiotic relationship with the fungi?
Mr. Richards: Yes, the specificity changes depending on where it's found in the world. For some genera in the United States we know there are a few fungi that are very cosmopolitan which germinate many different kinds of orchids. In other cases, not so, they are much more specific.
Ayesha: What kind of habitats/ecosystems are they found in the United States and around the world?
Mr. Richards: About every kind that you can think of; excluding solid ice in Antarctica. In the southern hemisphere half way between New Zealand and Antarctica there is an island called Macquarie Island, there are orchids there! Hawaii has three native orchids and Alaska has more than 20 native orchids. Some people find that surprising.
Ayesha: Yes that is surprising. One would think that a tropical island would be more hospitable to orchids than a place like Alaska. Why does Alaska have more native orchids than Hawaii?
Mr. Richards: One of many factors includes the age of the land. Hawaii is volcanic it hasn't been here nearly as long as some of the lands in Alaska. We were joined by landmasses and collided/separated at different times.
There are a lot of orchids in Hawaii that are exotic but they're not native. They are there because people brought them in.
Ayesha: I am glad you brought up the term “native” species. For the benefit of our readers can you please elaborate on terms like native species, invasive species, and any other terminology that might be relevant within this context?
Mr. Richards: A native species is something that has been here as far back as records can serve us. It makes sense botanically, it fits, and we can say definitively it was here. Then we have things that are naturalized. We recognize naturalized species as native populations because they've been here since the 17-century and are not invasive. They have become part of our landscape. Then we have the invasive exotics, which come in by other means and take over. An endemic species suggests that it is the only place on earth that the plant occurs.
Orchids play an important role in the ecosystem because some of them are considered indicator species. As I've mentioned before they need special fungi to grow. We are, also, starting to learn that it is just not fungi but bacteria as well. In the Southeast orchids historically occur in the longleaf pine forest and embedded wetland bogs. Places where there is constant seepage of good clean water. If you have orchids growing you know that you have clean water and your soil is balanced with the right microbes. Places that orchids do typically grow can be highly diverse. You will notice plants like Sarracenia (carnivorous plants also known as the pitcher plants), which in the southeast tend to co-habitat with orchids. You will notice other wildlife like butterflies that forage in these areas. If you have certain orchids growing you know you're working with all the pieces of the puzzle here. If you start losing orchids you're missing some bits and pieces to the puzzle.
Say you are restoring habitat and you know historically 40 years ago a certain species of orchid was vouchered from these lands. As part of the restoration management efforts we may cut some of the hardwoods out to open it up again, you get fire back on the land and then you track the change in biodiversity over time. It has happened to many places where you restore the habitat and the orchids come back. They've been waiting there all along as seed or dormant tubers or rhizomes for an opening in the forest for an opportunity to grow. When everything is in balance they come back. Orchids serve as indicators of the health of the ecosystem. They allow you to gauge your restoration efforts.
Orchids are lucky, they are beautiful, they capture a lot of peoples’ imaginations so they are hard to overlook but it is the fungi, bacteria, pollinators, and other little things that get easily overlooked.
Ayesha: But if we are paying attention to the orchid then we know that the little things that support the orchids are doing all right. Therefore the entire ecosystem must be doing all right.
Mr. Richards: Yes, they are the canary in the coalmine so to speak.
Ayesha: Considering there are so many different factors that go into play for one specific orchid to grow I am wondering approximately how many species of orchids have been identified so far?
Mr. Richards: We know there are about 25,000 species of orchids. Some estimate that they're around 35,000 species. Orchids are one of the largest groups of flowering plants, with the aster family being another close rival.
Ayesha: I have seen orchids grow in soil as well as on trees. So, in terms of growing habits, are orchids considered terrestrial (grow in soil) or epiphytic (grow on trees)? And does this behavior vary according to geographical region?
Mr. Richards: Yes it's definitely specific to a region. You would not find most epiphytic orchids in Georgia, although we do have one species (Epidendrum magnoliae). Epiphytic orchids are more tropical, and subtropical plants and they would freeze here in Georgia if they were growing on trees.
Approximately 2/3 of the orchids of the world are either epiphytic or lithophytic (grow on rocks). The remaining 1/3 are terrestrial.
Ayesha: What are the colors and fragrance that one can expect to see in an orchid?
Mr. Richards: Orchids display just about any color and fragrance we can think of from spicy jasmine, to rotting fresh, to the smell of chopped cilantro. Color palates can also range all over the rainbow.
Ayesha: Speaking of orchid fragrances I recently found out the connection between vanilla, a bakery aisle staple and orchids. I think it would be fascinating for the readers to learn about it too. Can you tell us a little bit about how these two are connected?
Mr. Richards: Vanilla the “spice” as we know it comes from the vanilla orchid. There are over a hundred species of vanilla orchids though only three are used for what we know as commercial vanilla. The most common is Vanilla planifolia though native to Mexico it is most often commercially grown in Madagascar. Vanilla is the second most expensive spice after saffron because it is so labor intensive to produce. The flower opens only for a few hours and if it doesn’t get pollinated when it is open, it wilts and dies. Given that it has such a short window every single flower is hand pollinated on the farms. Once pollinated it forms a pod, which has thousands of seeds in them. You may have noticed some brands of vanilla ice cream have little black specs. Those specs are vanilla orchid seeds. The pod, or capsule, (sometimes also called the vanilla bean) is then harvested, and processed for many months before it is ready for use. It is a pretty labor intensive process to produce vanilla.
Conservation: Threats that decimate orchid populations, the process of seed collection, propagation in labs and habitat restoration.
Ayesha: These are all very interesting facts about orchids. But if I may I would like to switch gears here and talk about poaching of orchids. Poaching is a word I have mostly associated with tigers, elephants and rhinos and it is hard to believe that some of the orchid species have been poached to the brink of extinction. Can you give us some sense of how far back this practice can be traced too?
Mr. Richards: Poaching goes back to the early 1700s when the European explorers came to raid the South American jungles. They used orchids as packing material to pack other plants that they were collecting. The orchids would flower overseas and then they would get interested in orchids, so they would come back for more. Back then it was so cutthroat that when they found a new species [of orchid] they would collect everything from that area and set the rest on fire so no one else could get it. People idealized these plants and they are still highly sought after.
Poaching continued to the pioneer days in America for settlers of Florida in the 1900s. Wealthy people from the North would come down to Florida to spend winters. They encountered these subtropical habitats, which had orchids everywhere, and they started collecting them. In fact, they would take camps out to the swamps, bring their friends from the north and collect wagonloads of plants. It continued on both coasts of Florida as well in the Everglades.
Of course commercial industry sprung up out of that in south Florida. And the easiest way to stock the nurseries in the early days was to go into the wild and get as many plants as you wanted. As a consequence of this practice, species started becoming rarer in Florida.
Ayesha: Is poaching still prevalent? Is it a concern in other parts of the world?
Mr. Richards: Yes it is still prevalent. I only talked about what was happening in the Western Civilization, and it continues here today (though on a much smaller scale). If you go to other parts of the world it is very much a concern there too. They dig up tubers, bags of them and they barter and trade. Tubers of certain orchids are sold in the black market for foods and medicinal purposes.
Ayesha: Besides poaching what are some of the other threats that have contributed to population decline of wild orchids?
Mr. Richards: The number one cause for loss of orchids or bio diversity in general is the loss of habitat and the wholesale usage of herbicides throughout the world. We can, also, attribute it to the history of the industrial revolution, agriculture, urban development, mining, utilization of natural resources, and forestry practices. Every time humankind takes big leaps forward our environment suffers greatly. So, we continue to lose.
That said how do you blame any one region or industry for the loss of biodiversity? For example, in Georgia, today it is the timber industry that continues to negatively affect our biodiversity, but how can you blame them when the Midwest went under the steel plow a 150 years ago and we lost the bison from those lands. But, now that we have a better understanding of how our decisions and practices impact our environment we need to be careful and not continue down the same path.
Ayesha: Given the threats orchids continue to face I am assuming that there are initiatives to protect and restore habitats. Along those lines I read that you have been working on restoration projects related to the ghost orchid and the cigar orchid. Are either of these orchids threatened or endangered?
Mr. Richards: Actually neither of those species are threatened or endangered in the United States where they both occur only in Florida. Cigar orchids are fairly abundant in the Caribbean and northern Venezuela. The ghost orchid, also, occurs in Cuba.
But, both the cigar orchids and the ghost orchids are protected in the state of Florida.
Ayesha: Why are these two orchids protected in the state of Florida given that neither is listed as federally threatened nor endangered?
Mr. Richards: Every state is different but in Florida if a plant is at risk of exploitation it can be petitioned for protection. In that case, a petitioner would collect historic and current data to present their findings in front of a committee. The committee would take all of the data and assign a score to that plant species and if the score meets a certain criteria they will give it the designation of state threatened or endangered. The ghost orchid and the cigar orchid are highly sought after and they are commercially exploitable. So, their score definitely put them in the category for state threatened and endangered.
Ayesha: What would be some of the requirements for an orchid to get federal protection under the Endangered Species Act?
Mr. Richards: Federal protection under the Endangered Species Act is usually given to those orchids that occur in a number of our states. An orchid that ranges wide across many political boundaries gains support from many different political entities within a given state. So with that pressure from different states it gains weight and therefore has a better chance of being listed for federal protection.
Ayesha: What were some of the first few orchids to be listed as threatened or endangered?
Mr. Richards: I think the very first one was Isotria medeoloides small whorled pogonia. It was federally listed as endangered in 1982 and then reclassified as threatened in 1994. Again, it has a wider range; it is found in Maine, New Hampshire, much of the East Coast all the way down to the mountains of Georgia.
The more recent one listed is Platanthera integrilabia, the white fringeless orchid (picture below). Actually, it wasn't even given its own species designation until recently. It used to be listed as a variety of another species. Once given its own classification it was petitioned for federal protection. It sat in limbo for 20 years until the U.S. Fish and Wildlife services was sued by the Center for Biological Diversity for tabling all of these petitions and not acting on them. So, this is one of them that got pulled off the table and they decided to do something about this. In September of 2016, it was finally listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.
Ayesha: Thank you so much for agreeing to do this interview; I appreciate it.
Mr. Richards: You're welcome.
Ayesha: What is your scope of work here at the Atlanta Botanical Garden [ABG]? Are you associated with research, propagation, out planting, or all the above?
Mr. Richards: My job title is Manager of Conservation of Horticulture. My team grows all the plants for the conservation program and our conservation safeguarding nursery in Gainesville, Georgia. I am part of the conservatory department, which houses all our living collections of conservation value. I specialize in propagation of orchids. At the lab we propagate a lot of the plants for our collections, displays, distribution to partnering institutions and conservation efforts.
We have a conservation team that works on research, but I don't conduct a whole lot of research. I have been fortunate enough to co-author research papers and work directly with academic partners, but I'm not bound by academia. I locate plants, I collect seeds of plants, and I assist partners in habitat restoration and management.
Ayesha: How long have you been involved with the orchid conservation program?
Mr. Richards: I've been involved with the conservation work for almost 10 years.
Ayesha: Since you specialize with orchids how about we start with you helping us understand what makes an orchid an orchid? How is it different from the other plants and what is so unique about them?
Mr. Richards: The flowers have bilateral symmetry which means if you are looking at it and you put a vertical line straight up and down through the middle you would have a mirror image on both sides. They have three sepals and three petals. One of the petals is usually modified into what we call a lip. That is the big showy part of the orchid and is usually evolved to be a landing pad for an insect. Another interesting feature that differentiates an orchid from another plant say a lily is, lilies have their pollen massed at the end of the anthers so when you rub the anther the pollen grains come off of it. But an orchid consolidates all that pollen into what we call a pollinium. Depending on the orchid it can contain 2, 4, 8 and sometime more of these masses called pollinia under an anther cap. When an insect lands the pollinia gets stuck to the back of an insect and that is how it gets carried to the next flower. Another thing that makes orchids fairly unique is most orchids have a very specific relationship with a mycorrhizal fungi; sometimes a very specific fungus to that species of orchid. The fungi infect the orchid seed and forms pelotons inside. Then the orchid slowly digests the carbon from this fungus to get its food to germinate.
We're sitting in a lab because we grow orchids here asymbiotically. What that means is we grow it without that fungus. So we sterilize our seeds put it on a modified tissue culture media that provides water, carbon, nutrients and sugars allowing the seed to imbibe in a sterile environment and germinate under lights. So, we kind of go around that process that happens in nature.
Ayesha: But in the wild, orchid seeds share a very specific symbiotic relationship with the fungi?
Mr. Richards: Yes, the specificity changes depending on where it's found in the world. For some genera in the United States we know there are a few fungi that are very cosmopolitan which germinate many different kinds of orchids. In other cases, not so, they are much more specific.
Ayesha: What kind of habitats/ecosystems are they found in the United States and around the world?
Mr. Richards: About every kind that you can think of; excluding solid ice in Antarctica. In the southern hemisphere half way between New Zealand and Antarctica there is an island called Macquarie Island, there are orchids there! Hawaii has three native orchids and Alaska has more than 20 native orchids. Some people find that surprising.
Ayesha: Yes that is surprising. One would think that a tropical island would be more hospitable to orchids than a place like Alaska. Why does Alaska have more native orchids than Hawaii?
Mr. Richards: One of many factors includes the age of the land. Hawaii is volcanic it hasn't been here nearly as long as some of the lands in Alaska. We were joined by landmasses and collided/separated at different times.
There are a lot of orchids in Hawaii that are exotic but they're not native. They are there because people brought them in.
Ayesha: I am glad you brought up the term “native” species. For the benefit of our readers can you please elaborate on terms like native species, invasive species, and any other terminology that might be relevant within this context?
Mr. Richards: A native species is something that has been here as far back as records can serve us. It makes sense botanically, it fits, and we can say definitively it was here. Then we have things that are naturalized. We recognize naturalized species as native populations because they've been here since the 17-century and are not invasive. They have become part of our landscape. Then we have the invasive exotics, which come in by other means and take over. An endemic species suggests that it is the only place on earth that the plant occurs.
Orchids play an important role in the ecosystem because some of them are considered indicator species. As I've mentioned before they need special fungi to grow. We are, also, starting to learn that it is just not fungi but bacteria as well. In the Southeast orchids historically occur in the longleaf pine forest and embedded wetland bogs. Places where there is constant seepage of good clean water. If you have orchids growing you know that you have clean water and your soil is balanced with the right microbes. Places that orchids do typically grow can be highly diverse. You will notice plants like Sarracenia (carnivorous plants also known as the pitcher plants), which in the southeast tend to co-habitat with orchids. You will notice other wildlife like butterflies that forage in these areas. If you have certain orchids growing you know you're working with all the pieces of the puzzle here. If you start losing orchids you're missing some bits and pieces to the puzzle.
Say you are restoring habitat and you know historically 40 years ago a certain species of orchid was vouchered from these lands. As part of the restoration management efforts we may cut some of the hardwoods out to open it up again, you get fire back on the land and then you track the change in biodiversity over time. It has happened to many places where you restore the habitat and the orchids come back. They've been waiting there all along as seed or dormant tubers or rhizomes for an opening in the forest for an opportunity to grow. When everything is in balance they come back. Orchids serve as indicators of the health of the ecosystem. They allow you to gauge your restoration efforts.
Orchids are lucky, they are beautiful, they capture a lot of peoples’ imaginations so they are hard to overlook but it is the fungi, bacteria, pollinators, and other little things that get easily overlooked.
Ayesha: But if we are paying attention to the orchid then we know that the little things that support the orchids are doing all right. Therefore the entire ecosystem must be doing all right.
Mr. Richards: Yes, they are the canary in the coalmine so to speak.
Ayesha: Considering there are so many different factors that go into play for one specific orchid to grow I am wondering approximately how many species of orchids have been identified so far?
Mr. Richards: We know there are about 25,000 species of orchids. Some estimate that they're around 35,000 species. Orchids are one of the largest groups of flowering plants, with the aster family being another close rival.
Ayesha: I have seen orchids grow in soil as well as on trees. So, in terms of growing habits, are orchids considered terrestrial (grow in soil) or epiphytic (grow on trees)? And does this behavior vary according to geographical region?
Mr. Richards: Yes it's definitely specific to a region. You would not find most epiphytic orchids in Georgia, although we do have one species (Epidendrum magnoliae). Epiphytic orchids are more tropical, and subtropical plants and they would freeze here in Georgia if they were growing on trees.
Approximately 2/3 of the orchids of the world are either epiphytic or lithophytic (grow on rocks). The remaining 1/3 are terrestrial.
Ayesha: What are the colors and fragrance that one can expect to see in an orchid?
Mr. Richards: Orchids display just about any color and fragrance we can think of from spicy jasmine, to rotting fresh, to the smell of chopped cilantro. Color palates can also range all over the rainbow.
Ayesha: Speaking of orchid fragrances I recently found out the connection between vanilla, a bakery aisle staple and orchids. I think it would be fascinating for the readers to learn about it too. Can you tell us a little bit about how these two are connected?
Mr. Richards: Vanilla the “spice” as we know it comes from the vanilla orchid. There are over a hundred species of vanilla orchids though only three are used for what we know as commercial vanilla. The most common is Vanilla planifolia though native to Mexico it is most often commercially grown in Madagascar. Vanilla is the second most expensive spice after saffron because it is so labor intensive to produce. The flower opens only for a few hours and if it doesn’t get pollinated when it is open, it wilts and dies. Given that it has such a short window every single flower is hand pollinated on the farms. Once pollinated it forms a pod, which has thousands of seeds in them. You may have noticed some brands of vanilla ice cream have little black specs. Those specs are vanilla orchid seeds. The pod, or capsule, (sometimes also called the vanilla bean) is then harvested, and processed for many months before it is ready for use. It is a pretty labor intensive process to produce vanilla.
Conservation: Threats that decimate orchid populations, the process of seed collection, propagation in labs and habitat restoration.
Ayesha: These are all very interesting facts about orchids. But if I may I would like to switch gears here and talk about poaching of orchids. Poaching is a word I have mostly associated with tigers, elephants and rhinos and it is hard to believe that some of the orchid species have been poached to the brink of extinction. Can you give us some sense of how far back this practice can be traced too?
Mr. Richards: Poaching goes back to the early 1700s when the European explorers came to raid the South American jungles. They used orchids as packing material to pack other plants that they were collecting. The orchids would flower overseas and then they would get interested in orchids, so they would come back for more. Back then it was so cutthroat that when they found a new species [of orchid] they would collect everything from that area and set the rest on fire so no one else could get it. People idealized these plants and they are still highly sought after.
Poaching continued to the pioneer days in America for settlers of Florida in the 1900s. Wealthy people from the North would come down to Florida to spend winters. They encountered these subtropical habitats, which had orchids everywhere, and they started collecting them. In fact, they would take camps out to the swamps, bring their friends from the north and collect wagonloads of plants. It continued on both coasts of Florida as well in the Everglades.
Of course commercial industry sprung up out of that in south Florida. And the easiest way to stock the nurseries in the early days was to go into the wild and get as many plants as you wanted. As a consequence of this practice, species started becoming rarer in Florida.
Ayesha: Is poaching still prevalent? Is it a concern in other parts of the world?
Mr. Richards: Yes it is still prevalent. I only talked about what was happening in the Western Civilization, and it continues here today (though on a much smaller scale). If you go to other parts of the world it is very much a concern there too. They dig up tubers, bags of them and they barter and trade. Tubers of certain orchids are sold in the black market for foods and medicinal purposes.
Ayesha: Besides poaching what are some of the other threats that have contributed to population decline of wild orchids?
Mr. Richards: The number one cause for loss of orchids or bio diversity in general is the loss of habitat and the wholesale usage of herbicides throughout the world. We can, also, attribute it to the history of the industrial revolution, agriculture, urban development, mining, utilization of natural resources, and forestry practices. Every time humankind takes big leaps forward our environment suffers greatly. So, we continue to lose.
That said how do you blame any one region or industry for the loss of biodiversity? For example, in Georgia, today it is the timber industry that continues to negatively affect our biodiversity, but how can you blame them when the Midwest went under the steel plow a 150 years ago and we lost the bison from those lands. But, now that we have a better understanding of how our decisions and practices impact our environment we need to be careful and not continue down the same path.
Ayesha: Given the threats orchids continue to face I am assuming that there are initiatives to protect and restore habitats. Along those lines I read that you have been working on restoration projects related to the ghost orchid and the cigar orchid. Are either of these orchids threatened or endangered?
Mr. Richards: Actually neither of those species are threatened or endangered in the United States where they both occur only in Florida. Cigar orchids are fairly abundant in the Caribbean and northern Venezuela. The ghost orchid, also, occurs in Cuba.
But, both the cigar orchids and the ghost orchids are protected in the state of Florida.
Ayesha: Why are these two orchids protected in the state of Florida given that neither is listed as federally threatened nor endangered?
Mr. Richards: Every state is different but in Florida if a plant is at risk of exploitation it can be petitioned for protection. In that case, a petitioner would collect historic and current data to present their findings in front of a committee. The committee would take all of the data and assign a score to that plant species and if the score meets a certain criteria they will give it the designation of state threatened or endangered. The ghost orchid and the cigar orchid are highly sought after and they are commercially exploitable. So, their score definitely put them in the category for state threatened and endangered.
Ayesha: What would be some of the requirements for an orchid to get federal protection under the Endangered Species Act?
Mr. Richards: Federal protection under the Endangered Species Act is usually given to those orchids that occur in a number of our states. An orchid that ranges wide across many political boundaries gains support from many different political entities within a given state. So with that pressure from different states it gains weight and therefore has a better chance of being listed for federal protection.
Ayesha: What were some of the first few orchids to be listed as threatened or endangered?
Mr. Richards: I think the very first one was Isotria medeoloides small whorled pogonia. It was federally listed as endangered in 1982 and then reclassified as threatened in 1994. Again, it has a wider range; it is found in Maine, New Hampshire, much of the East Coast all the way down to the mountains of Georgia.
The more recent one listed is Platanthera integrilabia, the white fringeless orchid (picture below). Actually, it wasn't even given its own species designation until recently. It used to be listed as a variety of another species. Once given its own classification it was petitioned for federal protection. It sat in limbo for 20 years until the U.S. Fish and Wildlife services was sued by the Center for Biological Diversity for tabling all of these petitions and not acting on them. So, this is one of them that got pulled off the table and they decided to do something about this. In September of 2016, it was finally listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.
White fringeless orchid in its habitat White fringeless orchid- single stalk in bloom White fringeless orchid - close-up
Photo Credit: Dr. Brad Wilson DVM ((All photos used with permission)
Please click on the image to enlarge
Photo Credit: Dr. Brad Wilson DVM ((All photos used with permission)
Please click on the image to enlarge
Ayesha: Is the white fringeless orchid native to Georgia?
Mr. Richards: Yes it is. Georgia is the southernmost edge of its range and we have nine populations left here. It occurs mostly through the Piedmont of Georgia, which is historically the most disturbed part of Georgia with land use and development. It has been turned over from cotton, to pines, to development, to an urban sprawl. The fact that it is still here is pretty amazing! So, we have been working with the US Fish and Wildlife Service and many other partners in the Georgia Plant Conservation Alliance to protect and restore the remaining sites.
Ayesha: What part of Georgia is called the Piedmont?
Mr. Richards: If you roughly draw a diagonal line from Augusta through Macon and down to Columbus. North of the line would be the Piedmont excluding the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Ridge and Valley in North Georgia. South of this diagonal line, the crystalline granite is replaced with more sedimentary rock in the physio geographic region we know as the Fall line. There's a lot of granite in the Piedmont, we have a lot of red Georgia clay, a lot of pine, oak and hickory.
Ayesha: And the white fringeless orchids!
Mr. Richards: And the white fringeless orchid, exactly!
Ayesha: You've already given us an overview of what are the threats facing most orchids but can you give us more specifics threats for the white fringeless orchid?
Mr. Richards: Historic land use is a big one for the white fringeless orchid. As I mentioned before the land has been turned over from cotton to timber to development and we have pretty much ruined a lot of our land. In other words the main threat continues to be the loss of habitat. These orchids occur in what we call the headwater wetlands. Basically it's water in its infancy when it is seeping out from the side of the mountain, or from the side of a cliff. It is the early beginnings of a creek where it's a flat wooded area. The water is just starting to meander and find its way to become a small creek and join a larger one. You generally find them there. Unfortunately, they don't have a whole lot of that habitat left.
Herbicide is another big one. The widespread use of herbicide has not only impacted pollinators but also decimated native plant species including the orchids. Monarchs and hundreds of other pollinators rely on native plants for forage and other needs.
Naturally occurring fire caused by thunderstorms would have historically been a major part of our landscape. Fires keep forests open, it keeps a natural balance in the forest canopy and diverse herbaceous ground cover in the forest floor. In other words, fire helps keep everything in balance. But now as soon as a thunderstorm hits and starts a fire we put it out. For decades we have rushed and circled flames and we put it out. I think we’ve also underestimated the historic use of a fire. We've been on earth for a very small amount of time. Prior to us being here this landscape evolved with fire. And when the Native Americans became part of it they didn't fight it they used it. They used it all the time, to open up hunting grounds, to open up agriculture plots. And we know this because of our plants. We know that the many of the plants evolved with fire. This had to have been here for a long time. And now that we have stopped it the balance is disrupted and we have got big problems everywhere. That is probably one of the single largest problems here in Georgia, the lack of fire.
Ayesha: Along with everything you just mentioned something equally critical to the survival of plants are pollinators. They coevolved with native plants and rely on them for nectar, pollen, and other needs. Is there any specific pollinator that is now threatened or impacted because the white fringeless orchid population has been declining?
Mr. Richards: One of the pollinators that could be impacted over time is the spicebush swallowtail (a butterfly species). This butterfly is one of the pollinators for the white fringeless orchid and the larva of the butterfly relies on a shrub called spicebush (Lindera benzoin) as its host plant. Both plants that this butterfly relies on are in trouble. On the one hand the white fringeless orchid is on the decline and on the other hand there is a disease called laurel wilt brought in by an ambrosia beetle that is killing many of the Lindera in the southeast. Although the spicebush swallowtail is not in trouble yet it might be in the future if the trend continues.
Ayesha: Some of the orchids you grow in the lab here are used to repopulate the wild. As populations decline within any species whether it is plants or animals we know that genetic diversity becomes a significant concern. What steps do you take to promote genetic diversity in the wild when using these lab-grown specimens?
Mr. Richards: We try to stay with nature as far as possible therefore we collect all our seeds that are used for conservation purposes from the wild. And if it all possible we are collecting natural, open pollinated seeds. We are not a tissue culture lab, we're not cloning plants, we are reproducing genetic individuals from seeds. The other thing that we keep in mind is we collect no more than 10% of the total seeds across the larger sample size. Also, to ensure diversity we do not collect all the seeds from one plant. For example, if I'm collecting from one population I may collect 10 seedpods, one from each plant of 10 plants. That amounts to 10% of the entire population, but allows for diverse collection of seed in hopes of preserving resilience and adaptability in the gene pool.
Ayesha: Can you walk us through what exactly is the process of growing orchids in a lab. From what you just described the seed collection process I'm assuming is in itself an extremely labor-intensive process. Some of these areas are probably not very accessible.
Mr. Richards: Sometimes it is a hike to get to them but you'll be surprised how often we find orchids just sitting in a ditch by the roadside. Do you know why?
Ayesha: No, I don't.
Mr. Richards: Many of these species rely on open areas with lots of sunlight. Roadside ditches also can sometimes provide the unique hydrology these plants thrive in. Historically, one would have found plenty of sunny, open, wet meadows within longleaf pine forests. Today, these forests no longer exist. So, the closest surrogate habitat can surprisingly be found in a roadside ditch.
Anyway, going back to how we do it in the lab. We often trek long distances to identify plants while in bloom. Later, we return to collect seed capsules and the data associated with the collection event. Once the seed is back at the Garden, we enter the data in the database and give it a collection number. From here, it enters our lab. The seed is generally dried to 20% RH and sorted into small lots. The seed is then surface sterilized using sodium hypochlorite and sown onto sterile culture media. Once seed has germinated, it is transferred into larger vessels and a new media where it continues to grow. It can take anywhere between 1-3 years for seedlings to be large enough to be taken out of the sterile culture media and acclimatized in our greenhouses.
I mentioned that we try to get an open pollinated seed capsule, but they are cases that we can't; it's not possible. When the cigar orchid (Cyrtopodium punctatum) restoration project started we had 20 years’ worth of field data. However, biologists had documented only one naturally produced capsule of the cigar orchid in 20 years! The biologist who does this is out there every single day taking notes. He had really extensive notes, which said only one naturally produced capsule and only 17 plants in the Fakahatchee strand, which is 20 miles long.
Ayesha: That is only 17 individual plants of the cigar orchid in those 20 miles?
Mr. Richards: Yes, that is 17 individual plants, sometimes miles apart from each other. And even though he is out there every day it wasn’t he who saw the natural seed capsule, but another biologist from South Carolina who saw it on one of his trips and told him about it.
That’s when they were like we are not getting pollination we need help with this and they asked me to come help. So, I went down and it took us a whole year just to find the plants in flower. That year we had no luck; there were no plants in bloom. Next year I did not get funding so I didn’t go but I walked them through the process of how to pollinate an orchid over the phone. You take a toothpick, collect pollinia from one and move it to the stigmatic surface of the other. They went out, found one [cigar orchid] that was flowering; they made all the hand pollination attempts. We were all really excited, but then they called me a few months later and said it had not worked. They had checked the plant and everything had failed. The next year I went down again- it's now the third attempt. I got there and started cross-pollinating. As we are doing this, the last plant that we visited was the one that they had pollinated from the year before and much to our surprise when they thought all of them had failed, there was that one that had produced seed!! After about 2 1/2 years we had finally gotten a seed capsule. But that was just one sample so it was just one pollen parent and one mother parent as we would say it or seed parent. That's not very diverse sample for conservation work. So then the next 6-7 years we set out to find them all, we collected pollen from all of them, moved pollen from one to the other and tried to do as many crosses as we could. We had a guy from the Kew Gardens [Phil Seaton] and he was hand-drawing illustrations of the pollination, so we could send volunteers the coordinates and give them specific instructions as to where they were and what they needed to do to pollinate the plants.
Ayesha: Why were they not getting pollinated? Is there a specific pollinator that pollinates these cigar orchids and they are just not there?
Mr. Richards: On the East Coast there is an epiphytic shrub called Byrsonima lucida whose flower looks similar to the cigar orchids. The cigar orchid mimics the flowers of the Byrsonima lucida and confuses the pollinator of that shrub and the pollinator ends up pollinating the orchid. The orchid is tricking it. But, the Byrsonima lucida doesn’t grow on the west coast of Florida (the Fakahatchee strand) so that bee doesn’t occur over there. We are not exactly sure what pollinates the cigar orchid on the west coast [of Florida]. There is some research out there, and some is still ongoing.
Ayesha: Are there any other factors that might be impacting the cigar orchid population from growing?
Mr. Richards: Earlier we had talked about people coming to the swamps and over collecting. After that happened there was another setback, we logged the trees there. Prior to the 1940s it was the largest strand of bald cypress in the world (the Fakahatchee Strand). We put in train tracks, we sent in steam trains and one by one we logged that entire old growth hardwood forest. The cigar orchids are epiphytes and they used to live on the treetops. With the bald cypress gone we suspect that they lost a lot of their host trees. More than 80% of the plants that are left in the swamp now live on old rotting stumps of bald cypress (picture below) instead of growing within the tree canopy
Mr. Richards: Yes it is. Georgia is the southernmost edge of its range and we have nine populations left here. It occurs mostly through the Piedmont of Georgia, which is historically the most disturbed part of Georgia with land use and development. It has been turned over from cotton, to pines, to development, to an urban sprawl. The fact that it is still here is pretty amazing! So, we have been working with the US Fish and Wildlife Service and many other partners in the Georgia Plant Conservation Alliance to protect and restore the remaining sites.
Ayesha: What part of Georgia is called the Piedmont?
Mr. Richards: If you roughly draw a diagonal line from Augusta through Macon and down to Columbus. North of the line would be the Piedmont excluding the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Ridge and Valley in North Georgia. South of this diagonal line, the crystalline granite is replaced with more sedimentary rock in the physio geographic region we know as the Fall line. There's a lot of granite in the Piedmont, we have a lot of red Georgia clay, a lot of pine, oak and hickory.
Ayesha: And the white fringeless orchids!
Mr. Richards: And the white fringeless orchid, exactly!
Ayesha: You've already given us an overview of what are the threats facing most orchids but can you give us more specifics threats for the white fringeless orchid?
Mr. Richards: Historic land use is a big one for the white fringeless orchid. As I mentioned before the land has been turned over from cotton to timber to development and we have pretty much ruined a lot of our land. In other words the main threat continues to be the loss of habitat. These orchids occur in what we call the headwater wetlands. Basically it's water in its infancy when it is seeping out from the side of the mountain, or from the side of a cliff. It is the early beginnings of a creek where it's a flat wooded area. The water is just starting to meander and find its way to become a small creek and join a larger one. You generally find them there. Unfortunately, they don't have a whole lot of that habitat left.
Herbicide is another big one. The widespread use of herbicide has not only impacted pollinators but also decimated native plant species including the orchids. Monarchs and hundreds of other pollinators rely on native plants for forage and other needs.
Naturally occurring fire caused by thunderstorms would have historically been a major part of our landscape. Fires keep forests open, it keeps a natural balance in the forest canopy and diverse herbaceous ground cover in the forest floor. In other words, fire helps keep everything in balance. But now as soon as a thunderstorm hits and starts a fire we put it out. For decades we have rushed and circled flames and we put it out. I think we’ve also underestimated the historic use of a fire. We've been on earth for a very small amount of time. Prior to us being here this landscape evolved with fire. And when the Native Americans became part of it they didn't fight it they used it. They used it all the time, to open up hunting grounds, to open up agriculture plots. And we know this because of our plants. We know that the many of the plants evolved with fire. This had to have been here for a long time. And now that we have stopped it the balance is disrupted and we have got big problems everywhere. That is probably one of the single largest problems here in Georgia, the lack of fire.
Ayesha: Along with everything you just mentioned something equally critical to the survival of plants are pollinators. They coevolved with native plants and rely on them for nectar, pollen, and other needs. Is there any specific pollinator that is now threatened or impacted because the white fringeless orchid population has been declining?
Mr. Richards: One of the pollinators that could be impacted over time is the spicebush swallowtail (a butterfly species). This butterfly is one of the pollinators for the white fringeless orchid and the larva of the butterfly relies on a shrub called spicebush (Lindera benzoin) as its host plant. Both plants that this butterfly relies on are in trouble. On the one hand the white fringeless orchid is on the decline and on the other hand there is a disease called laurel wilt brought in by an ambrosia beetle that is killing many of the Lindera in the southeast. Although the spicebush swallowtail is not in trouble yet it might be in the future if the trend continues.
Ayesha: Some of the orchids you grow in the lab here are used to repopulate the wild. As populations decline within any species whether it is plants or animals we know that genetic diversity becomes a significant concern. What steps do you take to promote genetic diversity in the wild when using these lab-grown specimens?
Mr. Richards: We try to stay with nature as far as possible therefore we collect all our seeds that are used for conservation purposes from the wild. And if it all possible we are collecting natural, open pollinated seeds. We are not a tissue culture lab, we're not cloning plants, we are reproducing genetic individuals from seeds. The other thing that we keep in mind is we collect no more than 10% of the total seeds across the larger sample size. Also, to ensure diversity we do not collect all the seeds from one plant. For example, if I'm collecting from one population I may collect 10 seedpods, one from each plant of 10 plants. That amounts to 10% of the entire population, but allows for diverse collection of seed in hopes of preserving resilience and adaptability in the gene pool.
Ayesha: Can you walk us through what exactly is the process of growing orchids in a lab. From what you just described the seed collection process I'm assuming is in itself an extremely labor-intensive process. Some of these areas are probably not very accessible.
Mr. Richards: Sometimes it is a hike to get to them but you'll be surprised how often we find orchids just sitting in a ditch by the roadside. Do you know why?
Ayesha: No, I don't.
Mr. Richards: Many of these species rely on open areas with lots of sunlight. Roadside ditches also can sometimes provide the unique hydrology these plants thrive in. Historically, one would have found plenty of sunny, open, wet meadows within longleaf pine forests. Today, these forests no longer exist. So, the closest surrogate habitat can surprisingly be found in a roadside ditch.
Anyway, going back to how we do it in the lab. We often trek long distances to identify plants while in bloom. Later, we return to collect seed capsules and the data associated with the collection event. Once the seed is back at the Garden, we enter the data in the database and give it a collection number. From here, it enters our lab. The seed is generally dried to 20% RH and sorted into small lots. The seed is then surface sterilized using sodium hypochlorite and sown onto sterile culture media. Once seed has germinated, it is transferred into larger vessels and a new media where it continues to grow. It can take anywhere between 1-3 years for seedlings to be large enough to be taken out of the sterile culture media and acclimatized in our greenhouses.
I mentioned that we try to get an open pollinated seed capsule, but they are cases that we can't; it's not possible. When the cigar orchid (Cyrtopodium punctatum) restoration project started we had 20 years’ worth of field data. However, biologists had documented only one naturally produced capsule of the cigar orchid in 20 years! The biologist who does this is out there every single day taking notes. He had really extensive notes, which said only one naturally produced capsule and only 17 plants in the Fakahatchee strand, which is 20 miles long.
Ayesha: That is only 17 individual plants of the cigar orchid in those 20 miles?
Mr. Richards: Yes, that is 17 individual plants, sometimes miles apart from each other. And even though he is out there every day it wasn’t he who saw the natural seed capsule, but another biologist from South Carolina who saw it on one of his trips and told him about it.
That’s when they were like we are not getting pollination we need help with this and they asked me to come help. So, I went down and it took us a whole year just to find the plants in flower. That year we had no luck; there were no plants in bloom. Next year I did not get funding so I didn’t go but I walked them through the process of how to pollinate an orchid over the phone. You take a toothpick, collect pollinia from one and move it to the stigmatic surface of the other. They went out, found one [cigar orchid] that was flowering; they made all the hand pollination attempts. We were all really excited, but then they called me a few months later and said it had not worked. They had checked the plant and everything had failed. The next year I went down again- it's now the third attempt. I got there and started cross-pollinating. As we are doing this, the last plant that we visited was the one that they had pollinated from the year before and much to our surprise when they thought all of them had failed, there was that one that had produced seed!! After about 2 1/2 years we had finally gotten a seed capsule. But that was just one sample so it was just one pollen parent and one mother parent as we would say it or seed parent. That's not very diverse sample for conservation work. So then the next 6-7 years we set out to find them all, we collected pollen from all of them, moved pollen from one to the other and tried to do as many crosses as we could. We had a guy from the Kew Gardens [Phil Seaton] and he was hand-drawing illustrations of the pollination, so we could send volunteers the coordinates and give them specific instructions as to where they were and what they needed to do to pollinate the plants.
Ayesha: Why were they not getting pollinated? Is there a specific pollinator that pollinates these cigar orchids and they are just not there?
Mr. Richards: On the East Coast there is an epiphytic shrub called Byrsonima lucida whose flower looks similar to the cigar orchids. The cigar orchid mimics the flowers of the Byrsonima lucida and confuses the pollinator of that shrub and the pollinator ends up pollinating the orchid. The orchid is tricking it. But, the Byrsonima lucida doesn’t grow on the west coast of Florida (the Fakahatchee strand) so that bee doesn’t occur over there. We are not exactly sure what pollinates the cigar orchid on the west coast [of Florida]. There is some research out there, and some is still ongoing.
Ayesha: Are there any other factors that might be impacting the cigar orchid population from growing?
Mr. Richards: Earlier we had talked about people coming to the swamps and over collecting. After that happened there was another setback, we logged the trees there. Prior to the 1940s it was the largest strand of bald cypress in the world (the Fakahatchee Strand). We put in train tracks, we sent in steam trains and one by one we logged that entire old growth hardwood forest. The cigar orchids are epiphytes and they used to live on the treetops. With the bald cypress gone we suspect that they lost a lot of their host trees. More than 80% of the plants that are left in the swamp now live on old rotting stumps of bald cypress (picture below) instead of growing within the tree canopy
Cigar orchid growing on an old stump Cigar orchid in full bloom. Cigar orchid - close-up
Photo Credit: Dr. Brad Wilson DVM ((All photos used with permission)
Please click on the image to enlarge
Photo Credit: Dr. Brad Wilson DVM ((All photos used with permission)
Please click on the image to enlarge
Ayesha: To sum it up the cigar orchids lost their host tree and probably the pollinator is gone too?
Mr. Richards: Even if these pollinators do exist and they do find plants to pollinate in the vast swamp, when the seed capsules opens where do you think the seed goes? The stumps are right above the water so it just dumps everything into the water instead of spreading through the canopy. Part of our conservation goal is to get the plants back up high in the trees. We do this by carrying large extension ladders and rope climbing gear through the swamp to outplant the cigar orchids higher.
Ayesha: How long does it usually take from when a cigar orchid flower is pollinated to when a seed pod is ready to be harvested and brought back to the lab?
Mr. Richards: For cigar orchids it takes 14 months from pollination to when the seed is ready. We are talking well over a year. Then we harvest the seed, bring it back here, let it dry and open and then we extract the seed. We take 10% for what we need and the rest we pack up and send it back to Florida where we got it. Then our Florida partners take it back to the swamp where we harvested it and disperse the seed there. They blow it around, smear it on trees and we also hang it up on the trees just so we get a more natural response. We're not taking everything we're taking some and putting the rest back in nature. And then out of what we have in the lab we take a little bit of seed and put the rest in storage. And then we sow the seed here in the lab. For a cigar orchid then it is usually three years from seed to when we have plants big enough to go back for an out planting [in the wild].
Ayesha: What is the process for the white fringeless orchid? It is my understanding that you are involved with the restoration efforts of that too.
Mr. Richards: Usually the same thing but because it is a temperate terrestrial it has a much smaller season. Once it is pollinated it has to ripen and make all that seed before the freeze. So it has a shorter window from the time it is pollinated to being ready for seed harvest. It is the same process though. We go harvest a small percentage of the seed; we bring them back, dry them and follow a similar procedure.
For the white fringeless orchid we have actually restored a population that was extirpated from one site in Georgia. The site was poached and all the plants were removed. A partner (with Georgia Plant Conservation Alliance) had collected seeds from it prior to it being completely poached. And the seeds were stored here [Atlanta Botanical Garden] for the last 10 years. When we got funding for the project 10 years later we said, let's see if the seed germinates and it grew and now the plants are back in the wild.
Ayesha: Where is this restoration work happening? Is it mostly in Georgia?
Mr. Richards: Yes, for the white Fringeless orchid it’s Georgia and Tennessee. But we work across the Southeast, as far west as Texas and as far south as the tip of Florida. And now we're working in Cuba too.
Ayesha: So, this is now an international project. Which orchid species are you working on in this project?
Mr. Richards: We are actually working in an area called Cienaga de Zapata; it's like the Everglades of Cuba. Local communities harvest orchid plants from the wild to adorn their houses and other areas. There is nothing commercial there, there are no hotels, few restaurants, and everything is done in the community. People harvest things from the wild to share. There are orchids everywhere. To help deter over collection from the wild we are working with the community and a government ministry (CITMA) to set up a lab where we will teach the locals how to propagate these locally for economic importance, so they don't have to harvest them from the wild anymore.
But, we're also there because we are researching four species of orchids that occur there that used to historically occur in South Florida. These orchids are no longer found in Florida due to over collection, development, and random natural events. The four species that we are researching are Bulbophyllum pachyrhachis [rat-tail orchid], Epidendrum blancheanum [acuna’s star orchid], Macradenia lutescens [longgland orchid] and the Brassia caudate [spider orchid]
So we are in Cuba for two reasons. One to educate the local communities about the importance of preserving their diverse orchid populations and two to research these four species I just mentioned.
Ayesha: Are there any plans in the near future to reintroduce these four species [rat-tail orchid, acuna’s star orchid, longgland orchid and spider orchid] back to Florida?
Mr. Richards: The hope is one day we can get seed of all the four species from Cuba, since the Cuba populations are the closest to south Florida, geographically speaking.
The first step is to go to work with Cuban biologists to locate the four species in the Cienaga de Zapata. We're on a good track there. We just got one of our permits approved the other day, which gives our research team access to that swamp to collect seeds for the four species. We are now awaiting our research collaboration visa’s which should come soon and finally, export permits. The second step is to work with the community in Playa Larga and educate them about why it is better to grow these plants from seed instead of harvesting them from the wild. It is important to share how and why the species disappeared from Florida. To say let's not repeat the same mistakes here. The third step would be to get the seed here and educate the community here. We can have plants on display at the Garden, interpret them, and tell the story of the lost orchids of Florida. I think it can be impactful. The final step would be to experimentally put them back in the wild on private or public lands in south Florida. This is a highly contested issue. You're either on “let's do it” or “don't do it, or you will tear a hole in the universe”. It's a divisive issue, but my goal is to do what's in the best interest of the plants. And we've lost them here and it is in the best interest of the plants not to lose them in Cuba. I would like to try to get them growing here at ABG so we can at least educate people about what we've lost so it doesn't happen again. If things spin off of that to a point where we can try experimental reintroduction in Florida.... cool, but that is a long ways off!
Ayesha: I agree the education piece will be quite impactful. If we manage to repopulate it in the wild that would be an extraordinary accomplishment! On that hopeful note I would like to say good luck and thank you for your time! I really enjoyed learning about the orchids. This was very informative and engaging and I hope it is for the readers too!
Mr. Richards: Even if these pollinators do exist and they do find plants to pollinate in the vast swamp, when the seed capsules opens where do you think the seed goes? The stumps are right above the water so it just dumps everything into the water instead of spreading through the canopy. Part of our conservation goal is to get the plants back up high in the trees. We do this by carrying large extension ladders and rope climbing gear through the swamp to outplant the cigar orchids higher.
Ayesha: How long does it usually take from when a cigar orchid flower is pollinated to when a seed pod is ready to be harvested and brought back to the lab?
Mr. Richards: For cigar orchids it takes 14 months from pollination to when the seed is ready. We are talking well over a year. Then we harvest the seed, bring it back here, let it dry and open and then we extract the seed. We take 10% for what we need and the rest we pack up and send it back to Florida where we got it. Then our Florida partners take it back to the swamp where we harvested it and disperse the seed there. They blow it around, smear it on trees and we also hang it up on the trees just so we get a more natural response. We're not taking everything we're taking some and putting the rest back in nature. And then out of what we have in the lab we take a little bit of seed and put the rest in storage. And then we sow the seed here in the lab. For a cigar orchid then it is usually three years from seed to when we have plants big enough to go back for an out planting [in the wild].
Ayesha: What is the process for the white fringeless orchid? It is my understanding that you are involved with the restoration efforts of that too.
Mr. Richards: Usually the same thing but because it is a temperate terrestrial it has a much smaller season. Once it is pollinated it has to ripen and make all that seed before the freeze. So it has a shorter window from the time it is pollinated to being ready for seed harvest. It is the same process though. We go harvest a small percentage of the seed; we bring them back, dry them and follow a similar procedure.
For the white fringeless orchid we have actually restored a population that was extirpated from one site in Georgia. The site was poached and all the plants were removed. A partner (with Georgia Plant Conservation Alliance) had collected seeds from it prior to it being completely poached. And the seeds were stored here [Atlanta Botanical Garden] for the last 10 years. When we got funding for the project 10 years later we said, let's see if the seed germinates and it grew and now the plants are back in the wild.
Ayesha: Where is this restoration work happening? Is it mostly in Georgia?
Mr. Richards: Yes, for the white Fringeless orchid it’s Georgia and Tennessee. But we work across the Southeast, as far west as Texas and as far south as the tip of Florida. And now we're working in Cuba too.
Ayesha: So, this is now an international project. Which orchid species are you working on in this project?
Mr. Richards: We are actually working in an area called Cienaga de Zapata; it's like the Everglades of Cuba. Local communities harvest orchid plants from the wild to adorn their houses and other areas. There is nothing commercial there, there are no hotels, few restaurants, and everything is done in the community. People harvest things from the wild to share. There are orchids everywhere. To help deter over collection from the wild we are working with the community and a government ministry (CITMA) to set up a lab where we will teach the locals how to propagate these locally for economic importance, so they don't have to harvest them from the wild anymore.
But, we're also there because we are researching four species of orchids that occur there that used to historically occur in South Florida. These orchids are no longer found in Florida due to over collection, development, and random natural events. The four species that we are researching are Bulbophyllum pachyrhachis [rat-tail orchid], Epidendrum blancheanum [acuna’s star orchid], Macradenia lutescens [longgland orchid] and the Brassia caudate [spider orchid]
So we are in Cuba for two reasons. One to educate the local communities about the importance of preserving their diverse orchid populations and two to research these four species I just mentioned.
Ayesha: Are there any plans in the near future to reintroduce these four species [rat-tail orchid, acuna’s star orchid, longgland orchid and spider orchid] back to Florida?
Mr. Richards: The hope is one day we can get seed of all the four species from Cuba, since the Cuba populations are the closest to south Florida, geographically speaking.
The first step is to go to work with Cuban biologists to locate the four species in the Cienaga de Zapata. We're on a good track there. We just got one of our permits approved the other day, which gives our research team access to that swamp to collect seeds for the four species. We are now awaiting our research collaboration visa’s which should come soon and finally, export permits. The second step is to work with the community in Playa Larga and educate them about why it is better to grow these plants from seed instead of harvesting them from the wild. It is important to share how and why the species disappeared from Florida. To say let's not repeat the same mistakes here. The third step would be to get the seed here and educate the community here. We can have plants on display at the Garden, interpret them, and tell the story of the lost orchids of Florida. I think it can be impactful. The final step would be to experimentally put them back in the wild on private or public lands in south Florida. This is a highly contested issue. You're either on “let's do it” or “don't do it, or you will tear a hole in the universe”. It's a divisive issue, but my goal is to do what's in the best interest of the plants. And we've lost them here and it is in the best interest of the plants not to lose them in Cuba. I would like to try to get them growing here at ABG so we can at least educate people about what we've lost so it doesn't happen again. If things spin off of that to a point where we can try experimental reintroduction in Florida.... cool, but that is a long ways off!
Ayesha: I agree the education piece will be quite impactful. If we manage to repopulate it in the wild that would be an extraordinary accomplishment! On that hopeful note I would like to say good luck and thank you for your time! I really enjoyed learning about the orchids. This was very informative and engaging and I hope it is for the readers too!
Who to support:
Please find listed below organizations dedicated to preserving native orchids. Please take a few minutes to visit their website to pledge your support by signing petitions, volunteering your time, making a donation, and staying informed. Should you wish to make a contribution please send your contributions directly to an organization of your choice.
Atlanta Botanical Garden
Georgia Plant Conservation Alliance
North American Orchid Conservation Center
Orchid Conservation Coalition
Native Orchid Conservation Inc
Orchid Conservation Alliance
The Nature Conservancy
Please find listed below organizations dedicated to preserving native orchids. Please take a few minutes to visit their website to pledge your support by signing petitions, volunteering your time, making a donation, and staying informed. Should you wish to make a contribution please send your contributions directly to an organization of your choice.
Atlanta Botanical Garden
Georgia Plant Conservation Alliance
North American Orchid Conservation Center
Orchid Conservation Coalition
Native Orchid Conservation Inc
Orchid Conservation Alliance
The Nature Conservancy