The odd life of an underground orchid | Hacker News Reader

The odd life of an underground orchid

earthsky.org

60 pointsMz23 comments

If this plant never emerges above the ground (even the flower remains underground unless disturbed by curious botanists), how does it spread its seeds? The seeds would be deposited right on top of the parent.

The article briefly mentions rats eating the seeds, so maybe this plant relies on surface disturbance (animals, heavy rain, etc.) to carry its seeds away?

Or perhaps this plant has no need to spread far and wide, since it depends so heavily on a specific combination of fungus and shrub. It would be futile to spread the seeds outside of this narrow habitable zone.

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhizanthella_gardneri

>>Rhizanthella gardneri reproduces vegetatively by which it can produce three daughter plants. They also undergo sexual reproduction, and underground insects such as termites and gnats are known to pollinate the flowers

"Because of its rarity, the locations of the orchids are a secret."

I always have mixed feelings when reading things like that. Specially for such a beautiful flower! Let's hope they find a way to reproduce them in the lab and end with the secrecy.

Holoparasites are, so far, virtually impossible. See rafflesia, for instance. Haustorium's one hell of an organ - most likely how this orchid extracts nutrients from the mycelium.

The flower is underground, you wouldn't see it anyway.

Without disturbing them, yes. Having the location publicly known would just serve as an invitation for amateurs to disturb it. On the other hand, some amateur might find a way of finding other specimens with less effort.

I understand their point of view and, at least temporally, it might be the best course of action. I just wish, as a matter of principle, that there was no need for secrecy.

Its generally pretty easy to find plants just by using Google maps. You can't see the plants themselves, but you can make an educated guess about which sites will have the appropriate terrain and microclimate. It is enough work though to deter people who are only casually interested.

If there really are only a handful left then that probably doesn't work in this case, but for most things that are merely uncommon it's a pretty good technique.

You seem to presume that most folks know a great deal about a great many things that they likely do not know. I would have no idea how to even begin doing such a thing and I was one of the top three students of my graduating high school class, got my AA cum laude (etc, etc).

Huh. I could probably do that.. Begin with reading books about meteorology, starting with general introductions and branching into microclimate, then geology and geography, again introductions first and then more detailed works about the climate zone you're interested in. You should be able to get books about smaller regions, continents is easy, many countries can be done. And of course, you'll need information about the plants you're looking for - what kinds of water, light, nutrients is best and what is permissable, deduce from this the possible places and the plants that should go with it. Could also help to look at pests the plant is susceptible to.

If you need more details, you can get into the recent literature which might not have made it into a book yet or which is not part of a big-enough field. You should be able to understand most by now; refer back to the books if there are issues.

Any university library should be able to offer these; if you buy it'll easily be a few hundred since one book can cost over 150€. So there.

Edit: Once you get enough into the details, it's also a good idea to start asking people. (And the way your comment's parent put it, there should be a community around who has very detailed knowledge about these things. Befriending them would help. Or try to shoot an email to any professor, most of them are very open to reasonable enquieries (which are not demands to prove your perpetuum mobile idea please.. some people..) But then again, how far do you want to go?)

Good reply

You're making it out to be way more complicated than it actually is. A good example is that there is a certain type of mushroom that only grows out of wood buried in river sediment. So you use Google maps to look for where rivers have bends where wood would likely wash up when they flood. You need to actually visit a few sites in person in order to calibrate your satellite reading ability, but it doesn't take more than a couple days or require any specialized knowledge.

You can also download data on the soil types, trees, rainfall, temperature, forest fires, etc., but again even this just requires a couple days of googling and reading stuff.

I didn't say it couldn't be done. But I deal every day with cashiers who can't count money and there are tons of people who have no idea how to use Google maps. I spend a lot of a time at a library where I routinely watch library staff assist people who can't figure out how to get online -- by which I mean they are logged in and the browser has auto-opened for them and it isn't on the page they want and they have no idea how to get to what they want. And I see endless other examples of lack of basic computer literacy where library staff have to explain very basic things.

I am sure there are people who can do this. I just don't think it's all that many people in the grand scheme of things.

We have mycoheteroytrophs in the U.S. also, e.g. monotropa uniflora (Indian pipes). They grow in a symbiotic relationship with Russula mushrooms.

Some other good examples are snow plant (Sarcodes sanguinea)[1] and phantom orchid (Cephalanthera austiniae)[2]. It's also probably worth mentioning that this is an example of symbiosis in the borad sense. It's not a mutualistic relationship where both the fungus and the orchid benefit. The parasitic plant is using the fungus essential as a straw to suck sugars and nutrients from the roots of other plants. The fungus does not appear to gain in any way from the relationship.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarcodes

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cephalanthera_austiniae

Like our use of cows. Maybe tangential benefits, from being used by something that is itself successful?

"We needed all the help we could get since it often took hours of searching under shrubs on hands and knees to find just one underground orchid!"

It's probably just my unrealistic view of what Australia is like, but that doesn't seem very enjoyable, safe, or even sane.

>my unrealistic view of what Australia is like, but that doesn't seem very enjoyable, safe, or even sane.

That's Australia and Australians for ya, mate. And especially young Australian Field Scientists. They're a hardy and fun loving people in a terrible and unforgiving land. Source? Personal experience and historical documents.

I love that it's "there are only 50 of these rare orchids that live their whole lives underground left!", next to photos of one being unearthed and exposed to the air. Also "their existence is a top secret, so all you rabid adventurer collector types, don't go reading this article and come looking for them now" - hilar!

If you like this, you will love the "worm of Dune like" Hydnora africana. A sort of vegetal graboid.

As a Mefi reader an HNer, I'm always disappointed when I see non-hacking Mefi links posted on HN.

I don't know why, but I suspect people looking for karma, but I would like to be proven the contrary.

What is Mefi?

metafilter.com

It is called participating in good faith according to the guidelines:

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Hacker News Guidelines

What to Submit On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

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