Dactylorhiza purpurella seed germination

[naoki]

My Dactylorhia purpurella seeds germinated recentlhy.  I'm wondering when is a good time to move them out of the dark area.  Currently, I think the root is starting to form (the right bottom part of the 1st photo?). The diameter of the protocomb is about 0.5-2.5mm.  I'm guessing that it might be better to wait a bit longer (e.g. until the shoot start to form).  It is symbiotic germination (using "dirt" from the garden and cardboard) if this makes difference.

I appreciate any advise!

[Maggi Young]

Welcome, naoki! I've never grown orchid seeds in this way, though it is  a method that has been discussed in the Forum before - so I'm hoping that there will be lots of advice heading your way. Seems you've made a great start to the process so far!

[mark smyth]

Fantastic! Well done

[johnstephen29]

Yes well done naoki, it's also given me am idea on how to germinate some orchid seeds of my own that I recieved from the seed exchange.

[winwen]

OMG, what a dirt!
I think you could start making business with it.
Of all of the experiments with the cardboard-method, this is the most promising!

I would tend to seperate the protocorms -otherwise there would be too many to nourish for the fungus.
12-15 protocorms per box would be OK.
When the protocorms have reached a size of 5-6mm and have the characteristic dark tip on their shoot, they need a cold-period.
After that cold-period, you can start growing these under light.

[naoki]

Thank you for the welcome and advise!

I'll try to transplant some of the protocorms.

I wonder if anyone tried to augment the fungi with some nutrition at this stage.  Like sprinkling oat meal, giving dilute pineapple juice, coconut water, rice water, sucrose etc.  It is likely to screw up the balance, though.

So I should keep them in the dark until they reach to the bigger size.  After that, I need the cold treatment.  Does this mean that it will take about a half year or more to reach to the stage where shoot start to develop, and they should stay in dark during this period?  I'm a complete beginner with Dactylorhiza (last year was my first try of growing them), so I don't know the basics...

I realized that I didn't provide details in the original post.  I sowed the seeds last fall, gave a couple month of 5-10C cold treatment in the heated garage.  I'm in Alaska, so they didn't get too much light during the time.  Then I put them into the a dark area indoor (10-12C night, 21C day) around the beginning of this year.  At that time, it was mostly covered by fungal hyphae, and no growth from the seeds.  I have forgotten about it, and I found the germination last week.  So they did already experience cold period once.

I did post a bit more detailed post in the other forum here (since there weren't any talk about this method in this forum):
http://www.slippertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=36654
I should have included the details here, too. Sorry...

The soil is mostly old peat based potting mix+perlite, inoculated with soil (collected from the decaying leaves at the base or spruce, poplar and aspen trees from my backyard/boreal forest).

[Maggi Young]

Actually, there has been some discussion of this method of growing on cardboard in this forum in the past ....   I may try to find it, if someone doesn't know  offhand where it is........


 mmmm, yes, quite a few references , but this is the main page I think.... http://www.srgc.net/forum/index.php?topic=9466.msg264469#msg264469


 and this : http://www.srgc.net/forum/index.php?topic=12134.msg315588#msg315588- which contains other useful links.

[winwen]

Thank you for the welcome and advise!

I'll try to transplant some of the protocorms.

I wonder if anyone tried to augment the fungi with some nutrition at this stage.  Like sprinkling oat meal, giving dilute pineapple juice, coconut water, rice water, sucrose etc.  It is likely to screw up the balance, though.

So I should keep them in the dark until they reach to the bigger size.  After that, I need the cold treatment.  Does this mean that it will take about a half year or more to reach to the stage where shoot start to develop, and they should stay in dark during this period?  I'm a complete beginner with Dactylorhiza (last year was my first try of growing them), so I don't know the basics...

Naoki,
3 months cold treatment will be enough, but temperatures have to be rather below 6°C!
Please don't use any fertilizer! Symbiotic fungi can only compete with other fungi/bacteria in soils which are low in nutrients - especially Nitrogen!
Fresh Cellulose (cardboard) and patience are more important (as well as slug- and snail-protection later)!
Hope to read from you soon.....

[naoki]

Thank you for the links, Maggi.

OK, so adding something extra is a bad idea.  I saw some people mentions that the growth of fungi become "weaker" after a while, so maybe adding additional carbon source could help in the future.  But you are probably right, and other types of fungi might take over with easily accessible carbon source.  Regardless of success of failure, I'll report back the progress!

[naoki]

Here is an update of this project.  Here is the rough sketch of what happened during the last year.

- Oct 14, 2014
Cardboard sowing. Placed in the heated garage, which could go down to 40F.

- Jan., 2015
Brought them indoor (60-70/50-55F) in the dark grow tent.

- Feb 26, 2015
lots of germination, about 0.5-2mm.

- Mid March, 2015
some were transplanted to another cardboard setup.  Too many germination, and it was getting too crowded.  All of these were experimental, and they didn't make it.  This is part of the reason that the number of survivors are low.  I have to think how to deal with this transplant issue.   The ones which was left in the original germination container survived, and kept growing.

- April 13, 2015
some were moved under T8 light.  I left others (including the original germination tray which survived) in the dark until later in the summer (I forgot to record when I brought them under the light).  But they appear to be able to stay in the dark for a long time.

- Oct 24, 2015
moved to cool garage (around 10F).  By this time, the tubers were about 6-8mm long, and they looked dormant.  Quite a lot of germinated seeds didn't grow as fast as the ones which grew well.  In other words, there were 2 discrete group; good growers and not good growers (majority).  By this time, most of the cardboard was completely degraded and became mash.  In the first year, I could see the leaf like structure, but none of them expanded the leaves.  I think they need cold period to expand the leaves.

- April 11, 2016
They were moved indoor (72F max, 63F min) under old-fashioned red+blue LED.  Inside of the container was still moist, I watered only once or twice in the winter dormancy.  I didn't see any green leaves, but the tubers looked ok.

- April 22, 2016
The leaves appeared from about 5 tubers, about 2cm long.  Amazingly quick expansion of the leaves. I'm going to start to remove the cover gradually.

So, it seems that this may be a success after all.  The rest should be similar to deflasked seedlings.  The number of survivors is low, but if I paid more attention, I'm sure I have gotten quite a bit more than a half dozen.  I sprinkled tiny beat of oat meal to "feed" fungi.  It wasn't a good idea, and this killed some seedlings.

Here are photos of them today:

The leaves expanded to 2cm in 11 days after bringing them into warm room.


These two are smaller ones (about 1cm):


How the original germination bed looks like.  You can see the leaves on far right.  The cardboard pieces are completely degraded.

[mark smyth]

They're looking good

[ian mcdonald]

I once contacted the laboratory of a large multi-national company specializing in horticulture to ask about mycorrhizal fungi association with germinating orchid seeds. I was told that ordinary garden soil contained all the fungi that was needed.

[naoki]

I think that you are probably right, Ian.  I was reading review papers about orchid-fungi relationship.  There are lots of unknown there, but the phenomenon of fungi switching is interesting.  So the seeds can use fairly wide range of fungi for germination, but the fungi they associate as an adult could be quite different.  At the germination stage, orchids are basically exploiting (easting) the fungi, so orchids probably don't care too much about whom they eat.

[ian mcdonald]

I once read that our native bee orchids, O. apifera (as was) quickly used up the fungi in close proximity to the plants and that was perhaps the reason that the orchids disappeared from that site.

[Maggi Young]

I once read that our native bee orchids, O. apifera (as was) quickly used up the fungi in close proximity to the plants and that was perhaps the reason that the orchids disappeared from that site.

 That would seems a rather "short-sighted"  action on the part of the plant. Not a very viable evolutionary development one would think.