Blog of orchid growing activity

Just about to flower

2/6/2017

This enticing bud is from a Pyramidal Orchid and will soon be in full flower and very lovely it will be, too. This one will be the traditional very dark shade, although we do see pale forms occasionally. We will be keeping this one, along with one other, for this years seed, but also for our exciting project of repopulation of a hillside meadow.

These plants have been grown by us in the usual way, in sterile culture and then introduced to potting compost. But we have started a rather interesting way of doing this. We keep a sample of soil with the appropriate symbiotic fungus labelled and ready to use. Actually, when I say a sample I really mean a lot, enough to do a lot of potting from. When the stock starts to run down it can be replenished with a suitable potting compost and mixed in, whereupon the fungus populates the entire mixture. This seems to introduce a symbiotic fungus which will invade the adult plant, or at least be available in the close vicinity for seeds to get started.

This approach seems to work well and we haven't had any failures yet. However, we are about to try this on a 3.5 acre south facing site on very light sandstone derived soil. This is very poor soil which drains almost like a colander, so it is something of a risk putting these orchids in. We shall see if the idea works in principle quite quickly as the healthy plants should put out their over-wintering leaves towards the end of the year. If they don't we will be surprised, but more than that, rather disappointed because the next step would be the introduction of Bee orchids to go with them.

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Time for Meadows

8/5/2017

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Garden meadow with oxeye daisies and Southern Marsh Orchids

Although it has been a while since my last musings, this is simply because we are very busy at this time of year. Our efforts are concentrated on repotting the orchids for this year and, sadly, sorting out the ones that suffered the winter weather and are no longer growing.

This time of year is when setting up a meadow should be at the top of everyone's agenda. The charity Plantlife is calling for every farm to have at least one wildflower meadow which is used for livestock grazing. Now, their plans may be out of reach of most householders, but not growing a garden meadow. The picture above is one such meadow. Plantlife suggest that every garden should have an uncut section which can contain wildflowers, but take care. Just leaving a plot of grass to itself is not going to automatically generate a meadow. Take advice and get stuck in to growing a meadow, you will be surprised what will turn up. Don't be afraid to introduce species that you think suits the ground, if they don't, then they will not persist. If they do they will flower and attract allsorts of invertebrates.

Even though it is still rather too close to improved pasture in places than we would like, our own meadow is developing well. We are increasing the plant biodiversity almost weekly. This is by seed and in the case of orchids, planting them. As for the animal life, we wait to see what takes up residence with considerable interest.

This year National Meadows Day is Saturday 1st July and we will be out in our own meadow just, well, enjoying it.

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orchids Enough for a meadow

8/3/2017

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Dandelions and Green Winged Orchids

One of the interesting questions we get asked is how many orchids do you need to populated a meadow?

This is a question which at first glance may seem rather tricky, or even impossible, to answer clearly. However, it is possible to produce some guidance to help with this conundrum. You see, it is not just about the number of plants, it is about the level of genetic diversity to give a good stable genetic population. The picture shows a meadow early in the year with Green Winged Orchids, Anacamptis morio, and dandelions which is a stable population of plants. Some species, like these and Bee Orchids, Ophrys apifera, can have population numbers that vary wildly from year to year, but have long-term stability. These very rarely have what one could sensibly describe as high densities of plants, unlike Common Spotted Orchids, Dactylorhiza fuchsii, which can form quite spectacular groups of flowers. So if you want to set up an orchid meadow, the answer is to put in more of the high density species than the low density ones. By starting off with enough plants in one area of your meadow to give a feeling for what the ultimate goal is, you can be sure that the established plants will seed and spread into the areas which are suitable for them to grow.

There will always be some loss of plants, so setting up a colony in a meadow will need more plants than you might think. Once established, though, your orchid meadow will be self sustaining, the orchids seeding themselves. In the meantime, planting new orchids occasionally will ensure an annual display of beautiful flowers.

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the question of spotty leaves

19/1/2017

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Early Purple Orchid seedling in sterile culture at 15 months old.

This picture is interesting for many reasons. The first is that the photograph shows a considerable amount of spherical aberration. This is a physical phenomenon associated with lenses which have flaws resulting in different focus points. This is different to depth of field and has more in common with chromatic aberration, where the different point of focus varies with the wavelength of light.

In this case it is not some strange home made lens that has caused this affect, it is photographing through the side of a glass jar which has caused this odd result. The plant is really very small, 2cm from base to tip and some distance from the side of the jar. This is not the most interesting thing, however. It is the spotting. This has developed after one year in sterile culture, starting as surface sterilised seed, with one sub-culturing event. This development of spotting in Early Purple Orchids, Orchis mascula, is quite common which makes me think that it is most likely not viral in origin. Well, not unless it is a viral infection present in the seed. There are ways to test for virus activity which are easy to carry out as confirmation, which we may do later in the year just as a matter of curiosity.

What is really rather more interesting a question is what controls the expression of spotting. Individual plants will always maintain the same amount of spotting, a very spotty plant will always be very spotty and a relatively lightly spotted plant will always be lightly spotted. What differs is the distribution of spots.

There is another aspect of spotting which has a certain intrigue and that is the disappearance of spots later in the season.

All these questions, all of which can be answered given a little ingenuity and a supply of plants. So far we have only started to look at pattern development in Common Spotted Orchids, Dactylorhiza fuchsii. These are very tolerant plants that are easy to grow and since they live for a long time we get several years of measurements from each plant.

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Time to think about your garden orchids

3/1/2017

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One of our Pyramidal Orchids siting out the Winter

As you can see in the picture, the New Year has brought with it frost. This is no problem for our native species, which live their long lives in our constantly changing temperatures. This particular plant, Anacamptis pyramidalis, is one of the winter green species. These are a group of plants which produce leaves in the autumn and sit through the hrsh weather ready to spring into life when the weather warms up and the days get longer. Most of our native species prefer to stay below ground with a small shoot just poking out to register the changing day length.

This individual plant has already flowered once and is now several years old. It is quite difficult to know how long many of our native orchids will live, but for some we already have some definitive data, simply because we have been growing them for so long. Of course, not all plants will have the same life span. They may succumb to pests and disease along the way, but we expect our Dactylorhiza species, the marsh and spotted orchids, to live for about 20 years. This is not so much of a surprise considering that even with the prolific rate of seed production by these species, the rate of germination and seedling survival in the wild is small. It therefore makes sense that the only way a plant can guarantee species survival is to produce seed for as many years as possible.

The story is complicated, as it so often is with these lovely flowers, by thevariable time it takes for the plant to move from seed to flower. Some are quite quick by orchid standards, if not in comparison with ordinary garden plants, taking only three years. This is in the ideal conditions of our laboratory and nursery, in the wild it will be much longer.

This is one of the delights of the way in which we grow our plants, you can have them flowering in your garden meadow this year if you get them in early. We are a nursery with an agenda, to help these plants survive and repopulate the wild areas of the UK. So if you are, or know someone who is, setting up a wild flower garden, make sure they have some orchids in there.

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Deflasking orchids from glass

22/11/2016

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These orchid seedlings are Early Purple, Orchis mascula, growing very nicely in agar gel with one of our growth media designed for growing seedlings on. By this time they are two years old, having been set up in our germination medium, where they stayed for the first six months of their life. Once they had grown a shoot and a root they can be moved individually into jars like the one above. Now they get the space to grow and produce the essential chlorophyll which will eventually give them independence from the nutrient medium and they can be moved into pots. It is this move which is probably the most difficult to achieve successfully.

The reason for this tricky step being, well, tricky is that all of a sudden it is out of our hands as to what happens next. Right from the start when we set up the seeds we have complete control over temperature, light and nutrients, but once they are introduced to the outside world they have to content with all the rough and tumble of bacteria and fungi as well as slugs and aphids. The only thing we can do is try and give them a head start.

We teases them out of their jars, the roots usually come out cleanly, but if there is and residual gel sticks to the roots, this can be rinsed off. Once they are in their pot they need to be kept undercover while the leaf cuticle thickens. In the glass jars they are in 100% humidity and still air, so when they are taken out dehydration is a real risk. So, too, is damping off or scorching.

Once the plants have established themselves they are really very sturdy, more than capable of growing to full flowering. The time it takes to get to flowering size depends on species and how late you can leave it before getting them into pots.

If you want to have a go at deflasking hardy orchids yourself, we can arrange to have them for you at one of our plant fairs or talks. If you have a look on the Fairs and Talks page you will see details there of how to get hold of them.

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Shady areas

24/10/2016

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Early Purple Orchid, Orchis mascula

I was recently reminded that one of the perennial problems for gardeners is finding plants that thrive in shade. If you listen to radio garden broadcasts these questions are usually answered with all sorts of domestic suggestions, such as Cyclamen and ferns. What is never suggested is that we have some superb native orchids that just love it in shade. I suppose the main reason that shade loving orchids are not usually mentioned is one of availability and cost. The last thing anyone would want is to encourage people to dig up orchids.

If the shade is partial then the choices are broadened out considerably. Early Purple Orchids, Orchis mascula, are an excellent example of a species most comfortable growing in shade and one of our species which we hope to have on sale in the Spring of 2017. It has taken longer than expected to bring these plants up to a size suitable for open cultivation, but we think we are there now. Another species which does well in shade is the Butterfly Orchid, Platanthera chlorantha, this is also a slow developer which takes several years to grow to flowering size. Interestingly these plants will also do well with some sunshine. These orchids, which are only a small sample of the shade loving species that grow in the UK, can be charmingly naturalized under hedges and trees as well as amongst ferns in a shady bed.

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Cutting and strimming

14/9/2016

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In my last entry I reminded you about the delights of the Autumn meadow cut. Well this year our garden meadow received a different treatment with the use of a strimmer to control the grass. I thought it would be easy, but I was a little surprised by the fallout. Let me explain. Normally I would use a hover mower without a grass collection box to cut the foliage. This device has a metal blade and acts very much like a scythe, which would be a far better device to use if I had time. Using a hover mower has the advantage of speed and efficiency, but the disadvantage of really putting a strain on the motor. So this year I took pity on the lawn mower and decided to try strimming the area instead. As you can see in the picture, thee are windfall apples in the grass from our Bramley apple tree. There are two reasons they are there. The first is that the tree is very large and the second is that the meadow area is down the slope of the garden, so the apples roll and bounce their way into the long grass. With the hover mower these are not a problem, the blade slices through them. Using the strimmer I ended up with bits of apple in various states of decay all over me, flicked about by the whirring nylon thread.

Once the cut had been completed I had a look in detain at ground level just to check for damage to any of our orchids and I was surprised by what I found.

Tucked away down at ground level was this, which I can identify from its position as a Pyramidal Orchid, Anacamptis pyramidalis. These are the new leaves which will sit over the winter until the Spring. It seems to be a little bit early but these winter green species put out leaves whenever they want to. It certainly looks like we will have some lovely flowers next year if that is a taste of what is going on at ground level in the garden, mostly unseen and unknown until they burst forth in Spring.

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Remembering to cut your meadow

26/8/2016

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Common Spotted Orchid in seed

Now that we are heading towards Autumn I am setting up seeds for the next generation of plants, which for some species may only be a matter of a year or two before they are into pots. Common Spotted orchids are a good example of this, they are fast and robust. Because of this we do not usually set them up every year, just every two years in large batches. Other species are set up every year and seem to take a lot longer, so we have plants at all stages of development throughout the year. Bee and Pyramidal orchids fall into this group. At the extreme end of slow development seems to be the Common Twayblade. These lurk in glass for four or more years before they produce leaves enough to support them by photosynthesis, quite how they ever became common I cannot imagine. Mind you, they do have a creeping rhizome which allows them to propagate vegetatively.

You will notice that the title of this entry is 'Remembering To Cut Your Meadow'. This is because although where you live it may be a little early, some areas of the country are about ready to have the flower meadows cut. It all depends upon whether the flowers have set seed yet. Once the grass has had the cut, if you are going to put in orchids for next year now is a good time to do it. And don't forget the Yellow Rattle, the orchid growers friend.

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August 22nd, 2016

22/8/2016

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Chalk Fragrant Orchid, Gymnadenia conopsea

This year has been an exciting one for us as we have been able to add Chalk Fragrant Orchid, Gymnadenia conopsea to our list of plants. It will, of course, be sometime before we can offer them for sale, but it will be worth the wait. This lovely plant has glossy leaves and a flower that is not only of considerable size but really is very fragrant. So strong is the scent that sitting by the flower on a warm day is enough for it to fill the air with its aroma. The scent is like carnations, with a little bit of cloves thrown in. As the plant can exceed 50cm in height these statuesque flowers are truly impressive in a flower border.

Like all new species that we have, getting the seeds to germinate can be quite a trial. We start off with our standard media and if we don't see any action in that we move on to some of our more exotic media until we find the exact match for the particular species are growing.

Next year our species list of plants for sale will increase considerably as plants we have been encouraging into pots become well established. Once they have been out of culture and into pots for a complete year through at least one winter season they become sufficiently robust to be handled from pot to post and then into your garden or containers. We would anticipate that the three new species to be put onto this website will be Early Purple, Bee and Pyramidal Orchids, so keep watching the catalogue page. In the mean time we have found a lot of interest in buying our plants that are in sterile culture, still in glass. These are £30 for each jar which contains 5 growing seedlings. Because they are not suitable for posting we will take a selection to the talks we give to orchid societies and by arrangement if anyone would like to pick them up from one of our plant fairs.

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Just about to flower

Time for Meadows

orchids Enough for a meadow

the question of spotty leaves

Time to think about your garden orchids

Deflasking orchids from glass

Shady areas

Cutting and strimming

Remembering to cut your meadow

August 22nd, 2016

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