Race to save endangered orchids has some wins,some wombats

Researchers collecting seeds to save endangered native orchids from extinction are competing with hungry wombats and sometimes members of the public who snip or take samples.

Collecting seeds has therefore become harder than ever,say Australian PlantBank researchers at the Australian Botanic Garden Mount Annan,who are trying to germinate seeds from eight species listed as endangered or critically endangered. The locations of these orchids are hidden from the public with skewed GPS co-ordinates.

Most of the threatened species are small and difficult to find,says researcher Jessica Wait. The flowers of thePrasophyllum petilum,the Tarengo leek orchid,for example,are “no taller than a blade of grass,and they grow in native grassland”.

Australian PlantBank technical officer Jessica Wait is working on a project to propagate endangered species of Australian native orchids.

Australian PlantBank technical officer Jessica Wait is working on a project to propagate endangered species of Australian native orchids.Brett Boardman

Researchers at Mount Annan have grown seedlings from about half of the native orchids at risk. Some may even flower this year. Others are proving harder to grow,such as the endangeredCalochilus pulchellus, the pretty beard orchid,says scientific officer Dr Zoe-Joy Newby.

“There’s obviously something quite challenging in its biology that no one has been able to grow them,” Newby says. “On the opposite end of that,for one species[the Tarengo leek orchid], we have over 2000 seedlings in tissue culture.”

Newby and Wait have been working for three years to germinate the orchids in the laboratory of the Australian Institute of Botanical Science. The program is funded by the NSW government’s Saving our Species program because many Australian native terrestrial orchids are endangered or threatened in the state.

Orchid. Calochilus pulchellus.

Orchid. Calochilus pulchellus.Z Newby

Wait says one problem is the fact that there is “quite a lot of information[on which species are endangered],but not so much about how to grow them and raising them as seedlings into mature plants”.

Home gardeners complain about fungus invading their orchids,but Wait says these rare orchids “can’t germinate on their own without their fungal partners,their mycorrhizal fungi”. She says that identifying a beneficial fungus from the many others in a tissue sample is a process of trial and error. “Sometimes we get lucky and the seeds germinate.”

Many of these populations of endangered orchids survive in small spots in only a few areas and have periods of bloom and bust depending on the weather,and intruders.

Wait says:“Sometimes it looks like someone had cut an orchid,or a wombat has chewed it[and] we have had plants that were dug up.”

Left:Genoplesium plumosum inflorescence,commonly known as the Tallong midge-orchid. Right:The thick lip spider orchid Caladenia tessellata.

Left:Genoplesium plumosum inflorescence,commonly known as the Tallong midge-orchid. Right:The thick lip spider orchid Caladenia tessellata.Gavin Phillips/Z Newby

She says when they went to collect seeds fromCaladenia tessellata,the thick lip spider orchid,in the Morton National Park after bushfires,“everything was completely burnt,the whole landscape had gone from quite lush heath vegetation to a sandy rock skeletal hill”.

“We thought there was no coming back,but after rain they somehow managed to emerge and thrive.”

Land clearing also imperils orchids,Wait says. When the surrounding habitat is destroyed,that also kills the pollinators and interferes with soil conditions and the fungi that orchids rely on,she says.

Leanne Osmond,a photographer who founded theAustralian Native Orchid Group on Facebook nine years ago,says most orchid lovers avoid harming plants.

“There are times it could be animals,” she says. “There would be occasions where certain people aren’t respecting orchids as they should be,and leaving them where they are.”

With 6000 members,the group’s administrators have warned members to take care not to destroy orchids when attempting to photograph and document them. “People clump with their boots,” she says. “We don’t want to love these orchids to death.”

The group tells members to “tread very carefully! Don’t damage plants,never remove orchids from their natural environment – it is illegal. Be mindful of the possibility of transportingphytophthora cinnamomi[a water mould that produces root rot] in dirt on your shoes.”

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Julie Power is a senior reporter at The Sydney Morning Herald.

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