Pyrola from seed

[Panu]

I transplanted Pyrola rotundifolia, Moneses uniflora and Orthilia secunda this year to my garden. The two former had very few roots, but maybe they´ll survive.

[Maggi Young]

maggi, do you think we have reached the point of needing a pyrola thread?

 Probably!
I'll fix that later today when (if ) I get back through the snow from work at the BBC!
 Got a minute to do this before the programme! 

[Tony Willis]

interesting...i will have to mark some plants to watch more closely.... i think there have (usually?) been green rosettes on stems i harvested seeds from, but usually they are in groups, so i can't swear to it, though i recall being careful not to pull up the rosette...
i wonder if transplants would 'take' with rooting hormone, or something more drastic like GA3?

maggi, do you think we have reached the point of needing a pyrola thread?

Cohan

my experience is the flowering rosette dies several weeks after the seed is set and usually a new one is formed at the base of the old one on a very short stolon at the same time. No doubt new shoots are also making their way up from underground  at the same time helping the plant to spread. I have noticed you can get clumps of pyrola rosettes in flower but the moneses tend to be spread apart. In the first moneses picture it is growing with the orchid goodyera

[cohan]

that is the time they are making new growth here as well, tony, so its probably that i simply never noticed the rosettes dying, since i have only looked at plants in a natural setting, even those all over my yard are there on their own terms..
P asarifolia sometimes will have several flower stems in a close area, but there can be large patches with only  a stem or two... my patch of moneses under the lilac has a higher density of flowers, but then of course there is only one per stem, and still not every 'plant' has one..
i'll dig up some pics...

thanks maggi for straightening us out always working indefatigably (or as if indefatigably!) to keep things clear around here
hope the driving in the snow wasn't too awful!
chilly here today, but i see a glimmer of unexpected sun!

[Maggi Young]

 Always happy to help, Cohan.
Dirving wasn't a problem for me.... I don't drive!! It was the digging out of Verity the car that was the worst problem.... we slithered down the hill and got to main roads which were not at all bad..... wouldn't have liked to go "off piste" as it were.... that would have been less easy!
Ian was the chauffeur...  He was on standby in case one of the experts couldn't make it into the studio but all was well,  she arrived in a 4x 4  driven by her partner, so Ian could go off to visit his Mum.

All this has reminded me to take a good look this spring to see if my in situ sowings of pyrolas etc have been fruitful 

[Hoy]

Maggi, I wonder, when do you have time to garden? It seems you are very busy with many tasks and "proofreading" this site too!

[Maggi Young]

Less time for gardening than I would like, Trond, but my work here and with the International Rock Gardener and other SRGC duties is a worthy "thief" of my time, I believe!
Luckily, I have my Head Gardener, Ian, the Bulb Despot,  to do much of the work, leaving me to stroll around and love my rhododendrons! 
http://www.srgc.org.uk/logs/index.php?log=bulb

[Hoy]

Less time for gardeneing than I would like, Trond, but my work here and with the International Rock Gardener and other SRGC duties is a worthy "thief" of my time, I believe!
Luckily, I have my Head Gardener, Ian, the Bulb Despot,  to do much of the work, leaving me to stroll around and love my rhododendrons! 
http://www.srgc.org.uk/logs/index.php?log=bulb

Thank you for your work! Here's a rhodo greeting from me!

[cohan]

Less time for gardeneing than I would like, Trond, but my work here and with the International Rock Gardener and other SRGC duties is a worthy "thief" of my time, I believe!
Luckily, I have my Head Gardener, Ian, the Bulb Despot,  to do much of the work, leaving me to stroll around and love my rhododendrons! 
http://www.srgc.org.uk/logs/index.php?log=bulb

Thank you for your work! Here's a rhodo greeting from me!

i second that--i know its very easy in clubs for the masses to just assume that those who are doing the work always will and have nothing else to do with themselves! lets hope we are not guilty of that here

[Diane Whitehead]

Well, Cohan, thank you for your generous offer, but I think it's best
to leave your plants where they have put themselves.

Meantime, I've been reading.  Linc Foster recommends sowing the
seed on sphagnum moss.  He doesn't say whether that should be living
sphagnum.  He also says he understands that a small Pyrola picta can be
dug up while in flower and treated as a cutting - ie planted in a pot of
sand.

Re the relations: 

Linc wrote that Moneses has failed to grow for everyone he knows who
tried.  It grows only under white pines.

He wrote that Chimaphila is propagated from cuttings
and he doesn't know anyone who has ever germinated any of the
thousands of tiny seeds.

Now, his mention of so many seeds makes me think of orchids.  They
send out masses of seeds without benefit of endosperm if I remember
correctly.  That's why they need the mycorrhiza.

So could that also be the case with these woodlanders?

[Tony Willis]

Diane

whilst it may be true that moneses only grows under white pine in the US it is not the case elsewhere. In Scotland white pine is an introduced species and the moneses which is very rare there was growing long before its introduction. It also grows in Europe under other species of pine. Clearly it has adapted to its particular habitat.

The mycorrhiza question is interesting because it is the received wisdom that it is necessary for it to be present for germination.

I wonder if  this has arisen

a. because nobody can germinate them and are thinking of a reason for the failure.

or

b.research has been done and it is true

You will see from my earlier posting that I have used some soil from existing pyrola's to mix in my compost. This I think is hedging my bets. No results so far but the seed is frozen at present.

[Darren]

Research has been done Tony, I have been very peripherally involved in some of it. New Phytologist has published several papers including this one. The introduction answers your question. Pyrola seem to be similar to Orchis, Dactylorhiza etc in that they rely upon mycorrhizae for germination but then can live autonomously but do still maintain a mycorrhizal association.

http://users.iab.uaf.edu/~lee_taylor/pdfs/MKendrick-Taylor-Ctrif.pdf

I hope the link works for the rest of you and is not restricted to those in academia. Let me know if you can't read it.

[Maggi Young]

Thank you, Darren, the whole paper is accessible.

[Tony Willis]

Darren

that's great,thank you. It will be interesting to read in detail.

Having read it!! it seems to raise a number of questions the main one being to me that it does not seem to be known if the same fungus will facilitate the germination of more than one species in which case it might be a waste of time using soil from a pyrola area on which to sow moneses or chimaphila.

I visited the nature reserve at Tentsmuir in the late autumn which was clearly the wrong time to find any orchids. It occurs to me however that the fact the  Corallorhiza in the research were germinating and growing more strongly  in the salix woodland might have been down to factors such as the moisture content of the area,it being wetter than the Betula area

[Hoy]

I've read the paper too with great interest. Here I often find Corallorhiza in sphagnum bogs or wet spruce forests. Monanthes usually grows in humid spruce forests too and I often find huge populations in the subalpine spruce-birch forests in eastern Norway. 2010 was top year for Moneses  here.
(The spruce is Picea abies and the birch is Betula pubescens ssp. czerepanovii )