The wild orchid mystery

More than just beautiful flowers, wild orchids have been confounding scientists for years. Our friends at Sidedoor — a podcast from the Smithsonian — set out to find a rare specimen for themselves. Guest: ⁠Lizzie Peabody⁠, host of ⁠Sidedoor⁠ For show transcripts, go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠vox.com/unxtranscripts⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠For more, go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠vox.com/unexplainable⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠And please email us! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ We read every email. Support Unexplainable (and get ad-free episodes) by becoming a Vox Member today: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠vox.com/members⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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• 1:17Speaker 00

  This is Unexplainable. I'm Bird Pinkerton, and today, we have an episode from a show I have listened to for years, Side Door from the Smithsonian. The host, Lizzie Peabody, takes you into the Smithsonian's incredibly rich collection of scientific and historical and artistic artifacts. And this episode in particular felt like a great fit for our show because it looks at a cool mystery that's hiding in plain sight: the mystery of orchids. These are beautiful flowers, my mom's favorite, obviously, but they are also far more than something you might give as a housewarming gift. They're delicate barometers of the ecosystems around us, and they have a secret relationship to the underground world. So here is Side Door.

• 2:07Speaker 02

  Okay, we need some discussion. The spread is 77 to 86. Gordon, are you in or out?

• 2:15Speaker 03

  I was on the low end, although I was not the lowest score. It is a smaller flower.

• 2:22Speaker 04

  This is the sound of a flower beauty contest.

• 2:26Speaker 03

  It does have good color, but it is not as

• 2:29Speaker 04

  I'm eavesdropping on an event that happens every month: the National Orchid Society's DC-area orchid judging. People drive or ship their orchid plants from as far away as Florida to have them evaluated by the 12 or so judges in this room. So what kind of orchid is this?

• 2:48Speaker 05

  This is a Phalaenopsis. This is a species that's related to the ones that you buy in the grocery store.

• 2:54Speaker 04

  Rob Griesbach gave me a hushed play-by-play at the back of the room, like we were watching a major golf tournament. He's an accredited American Orchid Society judge. But even if you're a novice like me, you'd probably still recognize an orchid from the plant aisle at the grocery store. They have long, thin stems, usually attached to a wooden stick with what looks like a tiny hair clip, and delicate, alien-looking flowers. These flowers are one of the things that judges are looking at as they pass each orchid around the table.

• 3:24Speaker 06

  One plant coming up. Very nice.

• 3:28Speaker 04

  They consider color, size, texture, form.

• 3:32Speaker 03

  Well, the petals, although not flat, are at least symmetrical, which is Symmetrically wavy. Yeah, asymmetry is a killer in flowers.

• 3:41Speaker 04

  Becoming an orchid judge is no casual process. It took Rob six years to be fully accredited.

• 3:48Speaker 05

  I mentioned too, and I mean, I started my PhD program at the same time I started doing orchid judging, and I got my PhD two years sooner.

• 3:57Speaker 04

  Rob Griesbach has now been an orchid judge for over 40 years. And just like in fashion or architecture, he's seen the aesthetics of flowers evolve over time. But judges are always looking for beautiful anomalies.

• 4:11Speaker 05

  So what we're looking at is, we're trying to improve Mother Nature for artificial traits we say are superior.

• 4:19Speaker 04

  So orchid judging is a little like judging a dog show. The winners get bread for their superior traits, and it's flowers like these that later end up in the grocery stores. But there's another side to orchids: a wild side. Orchids are everywhere, not just in beauty pageants or at your local grocery store. They're up in the trees, underground, even in the Arctic. And they're incredibly varied. A single orchid plant can be as tiny as an ant or weigh as much as a rhinoceros. And those little specks in your vanilla ice cream? Orchid seeds. But wild orchids are disappearing.

• 5:01Speaker 04

  Over half of orchids worldwide are thought to be endangered or threatened. And this is important because for ecologists, orchids are the canary in the coal mine. When environments change, orchids are often the first plants to disappear. They hint at environmental changes we might not notice. So how close are these orchids that are being judged to native orchids found in the wild?

• 5:25Speaker 05

  They're not at all.

• 5:27Speaker 04

  Rob says, like dogs and wolves, they're related but still very different.

• 5:32Speaker 05

  You know, a chihuahua is not very close to the wolf.

• 5:35Speaker 04

  So this time on Side Door, we leave the chihuahuas at home and set off in search of the wolves of the orchid world. Or rather, a lone wolf, the small-world Pogonia, a secretive flower that Smithsonian ecologists have been working to reestablish in the wild. But to do it, they have to solve a pesky problem they've been working on for 15 years: how to grow one.

• 6:08Speaker 04

  If a suburban windowsill is home to the orchid chihuahuas, then a muggy, buggy forest is home to the orchid wolves.

• 6:16Speaker 07

  It's all the ticks, chiggers. Mosquitoes are kind of bad today, so I hope you put on the right perfume.

• 6:24Speaker 04

  And that's where I headed with Dennis Wiggum. He's a senior botanist at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, where a lot of research focuses on forest ecology, especially how plants growing on the forest floor respond to natural changes as well as those caused by people. One of those forest plants is the small-world Pogonia. Whorl.

• 6:47Speaker 07

  Not world.

• 6:50Speaker 04

  Whorl.

• 6:51Speaker 07

  World. W-H-O-R-L.

• 6:53Speaker 04

  Whorl. The small-world Pogonia is one of over 200 orchid species native to North America. It grows from Georgia to Maine, but like most native orchids, it's rare and getting rarer in the wild. The small-world Pogonia is now extinct in some places where it used to be found, like Maryland and DC, but there's a secret grove of them here in Virginia. It is so beautiful and lush out here. We walked down a dirt trail, and soon, the noise of the highway died away, and all we could hear were the birds and the sound of our own feet. Well, mostly Dennis's feet. Dennis, your boots are very musical. Makes for great audio.

• 7:35Speaker 07

  Does that sound good?

• 7:36Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 7:37Speaker 07

  Okay, we're going to turn left here now and walk in the woods.

• 7:41Speaker 04

  Ooh, all right.

• 7:44Speaker 04

  If I hadn't been following Dennis, I'd probably still be in those woods.

• 7:49Speaker 04

  Dennis, how do you even remember where you're going out here?

• 7:52Speaker 07

  Well, I've been here a few times.

• 7:57Speaker 04

  Hang on, I'm caught up my cord. There we go. I got snagged. Our destination was a forest glade where Smithsonian researchers have studied a population of small-world Pogonia for decades. A few years ago, this group of orchids was down to just a handful of plants. Then, something surprising happened. A tree fell. And the very next spring, 49 new small-world Pogonia sprang up.

• 8:30Speaker 07

  Okay, here we are.

• 8:31Speaker 04

  And Dennis wants to know why. Wow.

• 8:34Speaker 07

  This is it. And that's the tree we were telling you about that died.

• 8:38Speaker 04

  Wow, this feels like a really magical place.

• 8:41Speaker 07

  This is magical. I mean, this is so far above anything we've seen in the 15 years we've been working with this species. This is amazing.

• 8:50Speaker 04

  We stood in a clearing speckled with dozens of tiny flags, each one marking a little green plant. This is an orchid?

• 8:59Speaker 07

  That's the small-world Pogonia. That's what we focus on.

• 9:03Speaker 04

  It doesn't look anything like the orchids that I have seen before. The small-world Pogonia looks like a little, green, star-shaped umbrella. The top of the umbrella where the leaves spread out is called the whorl. And it's a small whirl, after all. When the small-world Pogonia blooms, which only happens for about 10 days a year, it produces a white flower that looks, to me, like a little dragon's mouth. With the mustaches on either side. A green dragon.

• 9:36Speaker 07

  I could see that.

• 9:37Speaker 04

  But it's a green dragon that's wearing a skirt made of five leaflets. Yeah, it's a dragon with a tutu.

• 9:43Speaker 07

  Yes.

• 9:44Speaker 04

  Melissa McCormick is a research scientist at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center. She was already at the site when we arrived, counting orchids and marking each newfound plant with a flag. She and Dennis have also put wire cages around the plants to stop deer from snacking on them.

• 10:01Speaker 07

  Sometimes deer will definitely seek out orchids. I think this is one that they like because it's nice and soft and juicy, and deer can just nip the whole thing off in one bite.

• 10:10Speaker 04

  But the greatest danger to these orchids isn't deer. It's actually people. That's why this site is top secret. Have there been instances of people finding out where rare orchid populations are and then coming and disturbing them?

• 10:24Speaker 07

  Yes, that happens all the time.

• 10:26Speaker 04

  So there are orchid poachers, essentially?

• 10:28Speaker 07

  There are absolutely orchid poachers. Frighteningly many.

• 10:32Speaker 04

  What kinds of people do you think, I mean, who, who are the orchid, orchid poachers?

• 10:37Speaker 07

  Um, unscrupulous people who decide that this is a rare orchid and they want one for their yard will come and dig them up.

• 10:46Speaker 04

  And digging up one of these orchids means certain death, for the orchids, not the people. So the people who are seeking these out know a lot about orchids, presumably, and they would know that digging one up is a death sentence.

• 10:59Speaker 07

  Well, one would hope they would know that. But there's knowing it in your head and there's knowing it in your heart and there's thinking, oh, but I can make it right for this one. It won't die on me.

• 11:13Speaker 07

  But it will.

• 11:15Speaker 04

  It will die because the small world Pogonia has an unlikely but necessary bedfellow called fungus.

• 11:25Speaker 04

  Here's what we know about that relationship.

• 11:28Speaker 04

  Orchid seeds are as fine as dust. They are so small, there's not enough food inside the seed for the orchid to begin to grow on its own. It needs to be fed by something else. Enter our friend, the fungus.

• 11:46Speaker 04

  In a single teaspoon of soil, there are about 150 different kinds of fungi, and some of them will form relationships with orchids. So is it the fungus that chooses the orchid or the orchid that chooses the fungus?

• 11:59Speaker 07

  It seems to be the orchid that chooses the fungus.

• 12:01Speaker 04

  Okay. And orchids are choosy. To put it in terms of a romantic relationship, some orchids are monogamous. They'll partner with one kind of fungus their whole life, and if that type of fungus isn't around, they can't grow. Other orchids are polygamists. They'll form relationships with several different kinds of fungi. And others are serial monogamists. They partner with one fungus to grow from a seed, and then later in life invite a different fungus to grow into their roots and be eaten.

• 12:33Speaker 07

  And why the fungus grows in there, we don't know.

• 12:36Speaker 04

  So it does seem like a kind of a one-sided relationship. Come into my house, I won't eat you. Just kidding.

• 12:42Speaker 07

  Exactly. I think, I think it's kind of a nice turnaround. I mean, for anybody who's grown plants, you know that fungal pathogens are the bane of your existence. In this case, we have a plant parasitizing the fungus, and as far as I'm concerned, turnabout is fair play.

• 12:59Speaker 04

  So not exactly the model of a healthy romantic relationship, but orchids will be orchids. And it's because of this relationship that orchids are able to give us information about subtle environmental changes.

• 13:12Speaker 05

  And a good way to think about it is that orchids, because of this adaptation they have in interacting with fungi, if the fungi are there, which means it's a healthy ecosystem, then the orchids are going to be there. So if you start to change things around, then the orchid will suffer from that. It's a group of plants that if they're present, you have a healthy ecosystem.

• 13:34Speaker 04

  Dennis and Melissa are pretty sure that the sudden reemergence of the small world Pogonia near the fallen tree has to do with the presence of fungi in the soil. But as a scientist, the only way to be sure you understand a process in the wild is to replicate it in the lab. And that's exactly what Melissa and Dennis are trying to do, combining orchid seeds with fungus to try to raise little orchid wolves in captivity. So it's a good thing the Smithsonian just so happens to have the largest bank of orchid fungi in the world. And that's where we'll meet you after the break.

• 14:16Speaker 00

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• 16:31Speaker 04

  We're back and we made it out of the forest. As you can hear, I'm still following Dennis Wiggum, this time down the hall at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Edgewater, Maryland. He's leading us to the Plant Ecology Lab, which is currently orchid central. We're here because the world has an orchid problem.

• 16:53Speaker 04

  Over half of the world's orchids are endangered or threatened. Smithsonian scientists are working to reestablish healthy populations in the wild, and to do that, they need to better understand how they grow.

• 17:08Speaker 04

  I thought I knew how plants grow. You plant a seed, give it water and light, and presto. But for orchids, it's not that simple. Because orchids in the wild have evolved complex relationships with fungi in their environment. If you take them out of the environment where those fungi live, they die. So Dennis Wiggum and Melissa McCormick have a very simple goal for the small world Pogonia.

• 17:32Speaker 05

  The goal is to bring the fungus and the seed together and watch the magic happen. Exactly. Yeah, that's the ultimate goal.

• 17:39Speaker 04

  Except...

• 17:40Speaker 05

  No one yet has figured out how to germinate the seeds of small world Pogonia.

• 17:45Speaker 04

  No one, anywhere, has done it. At least not yet. But Smithsonian scientists have something others don't.

• 17:55Speaker 05

  What you're looking at right there is the largest collection in the world of orchid mycorrhizal fungi.

• 18:02Speaker 04

  This vast collection of orchid fungus looks a lot like a stack of Tupperware containers on a shelf. That's because it is. But even if you're someone who gets extra mushrooms on your pizza, this fungus collection doesn't look like anything you'd want to eat.

• 18:18Speaker 05

  Oh, that's gross looking. Melissa eventually will want to, you know, she'll identify what, what these things are, so.

• 18:24Speaker 04

  Can I hold it? Dennis handed me a clear plastic container, and inside was a poof of fuzzy white fungus.

• 18:31Speaker 07

  And that's what they look like when they first start to grow out, is they look like a little white or slightly creamed snowflake.

• 18:37Speaker 04

  Melissa and Dennis have amassed this collection by pulling little fungus balls from the roots of orchids, then placing each fungus ball in its own container to grow. Then they can identify the fungus through DNA sequencing. They've done this with hundreds of different kinds of fungi. And side note, 99% of these fungi are completely new to science. They're basically creating a collection of eligible young orchid suitors. So you are essentially a fungus orchid matchmaker.

• 19:11Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's what I'd like to become when I grow up, yeah.

• 19:21Speaker 04

  And for the small world Pagonia, that match is made. Through the fungus banking process, Dennis and Melissa have learned that our little orchid forms a relationship with a fungus that is actually pretty common in the forest. So, good news. Except...

• 19:36Speaker 05

  There's a little bit of a problem with the small world Pagonia fungus because it's one of these that interacts with tree roots.

• 19:45Speaker 04

  Specifically, living tree roots.

• 19:48Speaker 07

  They are dependent on that tree.

• 19:50Speaker 04

  Mmm, okay.

• 19:51Speaker 07

  And then the orchid is dependent on that fungus.

• 19:53Speaker 04

  I see. So you have to bring the whole chain into the lab.

• 19:56Speaker 07

  Yes. And last time I checked, trees don't fit in labs very well.

• 19:58Speaker 04

  This is not a hypothetical. Melissa and Dennis already tried bringing oak trees into the lab.

• 20:07Speaker 07

  We put the fungus with the oak roots and tried to get it established there, and it just didn't work.

• 20:14Speaker 04

  This may have been because they were baby trees. And young trees don't have nutrients to spare the way that mature trees do. But mature trees are too well-established in the ground to be relocated. So they tried growing the fungus without the tree, by feeding it the nutrients it would have gotten from the roots. That didn't work either.

• 20:31Speaker 07

  So it makes it very challenging. That happens to be a very challenging species to work with.

• 20:36Speaker 04

  So what do you do when half of a couple is not cooperating? Well, like any single person done with dating, you forge ahead solo, footloose and fungus-free. And it is possible to trick some orchid seeds into growing without the partner fungus, by placing the seed on a bed of orchid food. But even though this approach has worked with other kinds of orchids, so far, the small world Pagonia will not be tricked into sprouting sans fungus. But every failure is a step closer to a solution. So you have a two-part problem. One is that you cannot get the seed to germinate.

• 21:15Speaker 05

  Right.

• 21:16Speaker 04

  And the second is that the fungus that you believe you need in order to get the seed to germinate in the lab, you are having difficulty growing in the lab because it needs to be attached to a tree root.

• 21:26Speaker 05

  Exactly. But we haven't given up. There are a variety of approaches we can still use that we haven't exhausted yet.

• 21:32Speaker 04

  Next, Melissa and Dennis and their team are experimenting with tweaking the orchid food recipe, refrigerating seeds to simulate seasonal changes, and even exposing them to smoke to imitate forest fires. And through all of this, they learn more about the environment necessary for the small world Pagonia to grow. This means they'll have a better understanding of what it's not getting in the places where it's disappearing. While Melissa, Dennis, and their team will continue to work on solving the puzzle of

• 22:14Speaker 04

  the small world Pagonia, that's just one piece of a much bigger problem. Over 100 orchid species are disappearing from North America. And like the small world Pagonia, each has its own unique preferences. At this rate, a lot of these orchids may be lost to science before there's time to figure out how they grow. So Dennis has done what we all do when a project is just too big: called in friends. In partnership with the United States Botanic Garden, he created the North American Orchid Conservation Center, also called NAYOC. It's a network of collaborators all over the US and Canada, all working to conserve native orchids.

• 22:53Speaker 05

  We know that one orchid is not the same as another orchid. And if we're going to conserve orchids, we need to make sure that we do all the right things to capture their genetic diversity and have it available for future efforts to restore and conserve the species.

• 23:09Speaker 04

  The idea is to safeguard orchid seeds and orchid fungi, so that even if it takes a few more decades to figure out how to make the orchids grow, and even if during that time the orchid goes extinct in the wild, they'll still have the genetic material they need to bring it back. So all those fungi in the bank... You're going to freeze them like Han Solo-style?

• 23:30Speaker 05

  Yeah. Yeah, we're going to put them onto something where they're happy, and when somebody brings them out some years later, they will start growing again. That's the ultimate goal.

• 23:42Speaker 04

  Dennis says when an ecosystem is healthy, orchids are there. But when they're not, it hints at some invisible breakdown. So Dennis wants to see them back in the places where they once were.

• 23:53Speaker 05

  Part of, at least my vision for the long-term conservation, is once we know how to create the environment in which the fungus and the orchid are both happy, we can give those to homeowners. And they can create environments in their gardens and things like that where they can grow these orchids. And they probably will be able to put orchids back in places where they probably were until we made them into houses and shopping malls and things like that. So the more we can repopulate orchids in the landscape, the greater the chance they can respond on their own to changing climate, to changing conditions, and survive.

• 24:30Speaker 04

  So the holy grail for you might be walking past somebody's house and looking down and seeing the small world Pagonia growing in their front yard.

• 24:39Speaker 05

  You got it. I'd buy them a beer.

• 24:41Speaker 04

  That round of beers is still some years away. But for now, Dennis, Melissa, and their team will continue to study the small world Pagonia and keep trying to make it grow. It's not a question of if at this point, it's a question of when. And when that day comes, I plan to fill my own yard with a ballet full of little white dragons in tutus.

• 25:18Speaker 04

  You've been listening to Side Door, a podcast from the Smithsonian with support from PRX. If you'd like to see snapshots from the Orchid Judging Competition, or get a few tips on how to keep your orchid chihuahua alive, you can find them in our newsletter. Subscribe at si.edu/siddoor. That's si.edu/siddoor. And tell us what you think of the show. If you enjoy Side Door, leave us a review in Apple Podcasts. That means you, Mom. We love hearing what you think of the show, and the reviews help us reach new listeners. Side Door is made possible with help from people like you. Your generous support helps make all the amazing work you hear about at the Smithsonian possible.

• 26:01Speaker 04

  Our podcast team is Justin O'Neill, Jason Orfanen, Michelle Harvin, Kaitlin Shafer, Jess Sodik, and Lara Koch. Episode artwork is by Greg Fisk. Extra support comes from John Barth and Genevieve Sponsler. Our show is mixed by Tarek Fuda. Our theme song and other episode music are by Breakmaster Cylinder. If you want to sponsor our show, please email [email protected]. I'm your host, Lizzie Peabody. Thanks for listening.

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  Very sad.

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  It doesn't recur back at the base, which is what a lot of the cochlea pedaling hybrids...

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  It's trying to, it just, you can't see it.

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