“The Orchid and the Fungus”

Melissa Petruzzello: Welcome listeners! Thanks for tuning in to Botanize! I'm your host, Melissa Petruzzello, Encyclopedia Britannica’s plant and environmental science editor. Today we are going to be talking about orchids, because who doesn't love orchids? I think most people are probably familiar with at least one or two of the horticultural orchids that are pretty common, and some of those flowers are almost supernaturally beautiful. Just breathtaking. If you haven't stared into the depths of an orchid flower and contemplated perfection, well, I mean, you haven't really lived, you better get on that. But to talk less metaphysically and more scientifically about orchids, I have on with me Dr. Lynnaun Johnson, orchid extraordinaire. Welcome Lynnaun, thanks for joining me.

Dr. Lynnaun Johnson: Thank you for having me!

Melissa Petruzzello: I’m really excited to have you here today. Dr. Johnson and I are actually both alumni of the same graduate program, though we never knew each other. We were in different cohorts. He has his PhD in Plant Biology and Conservation from Northwestern University and the Chicago Botanic Garden. He studied a very special facet of orchid biology for his doctorate, which we'll get into later, and he is now a postdoctoral researcher at Rush University in Chicago, where he's working on Alzheimer's disease, which is so cool and obviously so important.

So, Lynnaun, orchids. Our listeners may not know this, but the orchid family is the second largest flowering plant family on planet Earth. There are more than 26,000 species, which is just an incredible number. Can you give us a brief overview of where they're found and some of the diversity we see in such a big family?

Dr. Lynnaun Johnson: Oh yeah, sure. So I know that you said it was the second largest family, but for most orchid researchers, they'd like to debate that and say it's the largest family. But orchids they're sort of fascinating because they are found all over the world. There's orchids on each continent except for Antarctica, and even orchids living all the way up into Alaska. So cold places like that. And so when we look up the orchid family, we can tell that, um, there's just this wide array of flowers, different morphology, different colors. Orchids can also grow three different ways. They can grow on trees and so they can grow attached to some trees, uh, using those as supports. They can also grow in the ground, which everyone's probably familiar with plants doing that. And there's some unique orchids that will attach to the sides of rocks. And so when they're attached to the side of rock, their roots will sort of grip onto the rocks, which is sort of fascinating. So there's just a wide breadth of orchid diversity. And the interesting thing and exciting thing that I studied about orchids was their ability to use fungi. Because they sort of formed this symbiosis with fungi, you can see that orchids, they have evolved to rely less on photosynthesis. So they're pretty unique and there's just so much diversity within the orchid family.

Melissa Petruzzello: Wow. Um, yeah, I think most people envision orchids as, as tropical plants, but it's really fascinating to learn that they live in temperate and even like cold areas as well. Uh, and how incredible that they can live on, on rocks and on other plants as epiphytes. When you have that many species in a family, there's obviously so many different ways they can, uh, exploit habitats. And I really didn't know until very recently about orchids and fungi and, you know, that's what you're here to talk to us about. So I'm really excited to learn, to learn more and dig into that. But first I want to ask you, do you have a favorite orchid as an orchid researcher?

Dr. Lynnaun Johnson: Yes, I do. Actually. I've sort of stumbled upon a few throughout the years. My favorite, I guess so far, would be an orchid called Spiranthes, and the common name for that is lady tresses. So it's in the form of like how you would braid someone's hair. And so the orchid, the flowers along the stem of the orchid, you can see that it's sort of twists, and so it's sort of wrapping around each other in a spiral sort of way. And the other one that I always loved is called Sherry baby, and this is an Oncidium orchid. And so with this particular orchid, it will have a beautiful fragrance and and it's something that I got my wife when we were first dating, it was just a wonderful fragrance and smell. And so those two are my favorite so far, but there's lots more.

Melissa Petruzzello: Both of those sound super beautiful. I used to work in a flower shop in my teenage years, and the orchids we had there, they were never very fragrant. People would always ask like, “Oh, did the orchid smell?” And we're like, “uh, no.” So I'm going to have to look that up and find, find one to smell.

Dr. Lynnaun Johnson: I would just like to chime in. So one of the most popular orchids is vanilla, and the vanilla, the fruits of the orchid, is just something that everyone loves, most people love. And it's one of those popular fragrances, but I'm usually surprised that most people don't realize it's an orchid.

Melissa Petruzzello: Oh my gosh, you are so right. Orchids are often thought of as just ornamental, but then you have such a commercially important agricultural crop as vanilla. And, and then of course all the wild species that, uh, maybe are not utilized so much for human monetary purposes, but are nevertheless so important. My favorite orchid, well, orchid type, are the sexually-deceptive orchids. I could definitely make a whole episode about them, but there are orchids out there that look like specific female insects, bees or flies, and the poor male insects actually mate with the flowers and pollinate them in the process. It's just so bizarre and really an outstanding accomplishment of evolution to exploit another organism’s, uh, baser instincts for one's own reproductive success. I love it.

There's just obviously so much we could talk about when it comes to orchids. And I do love talking about plant reproductive biology, but I would like to shift away from the flowers to hone in on what you mentioned earlier, that there are orchids that are dependent on fungi for at least some portion of their life cycle. That really took me by surprise the first time I heard it. I don't think orchids conjure images of fungi for most anybody, so what can you tell us about this symbiosis?

Dr. Lynnaun Johnson: So the symbiosis, you're correct, it's something that most orchids will utilize throughout their life cycle. And so when we think of an early plant, which would just be a seed, we’re usually thinking of seeds as just germinating on their own. For the vast majority of seeds they have what's called endosperm, and so that's the nutrients for the seed. And within the orchid family, there's a lack of this nutrient, the endosperm. And so an orchid - the entire family, to my knowledge - doesn't have enough endosperm to naturally germinate on its own. There's definitely studies that have shown you can germinate orchid seeds using various concoctions of nutrients or fertilizers or whatever, but the orchids in nature, they will stay dormant and they only initiate their germination when they're in contact with a fungus. And so when the fungus is living its regular life, and it's not out there trying to germinate orchid seeds, but it comes across the orchid seed. And as we know, for most fungi, they will decompose organic matter. And so the orchid seed, when it is in contact, it will sort of parasitize the fungus. And so it's literally eating up the fungus so it can germinate and use the nutrients by the fungus. And when it becomes a seedling and it starts to form leaves for photosynthesizing and making its own food, then the orchid will sort of move away from using the fungus.

Melissa Petruzzello:
Wow. So most seeds, as you said, they have food in them that provides the little embryo with everything they need. It's really fascinating that orchids don't have that food supply because you kind of feel like that's the mother plant's job is to provide for her little embryos going off into nature. But, um, so orchid seeds are actually really small then right? Since they don't have that food source built into them?

Dr. Lynnaun Johnson: Yes. And people have usually referred to these small seeds as “dust seeds” because they're so small, they're smaller than grains of sand. You can like, inhale them.

Melissa Petruzzello: Oh my gosh, that's really tiny. That's mind-blowing. Now, do you know of any other plants that need fungal help to germinate, or is this something probably unique just to orchids?

Dr. Lynnaun Johnson: It's mainly unique to the orchid family. One thing about science is that we, we continue to sort of learn new things every year because we're continually discovering different things. And to my knowledge, it's just the orchid family, the entire family, that is reliant on fungi for germination.

Melissa Petruzzello: Wow. That's so interesting. It's, you know, it's kind of hard to imagine how it's beneficial for a plant to rely on another organism instead of being self-sufficient, but I guess proof is in the pudding since there's this enormous plant family that does just that. Now you said that the fungus is kind of living its own life and, uh, you know, gets attacked by an orchid seed wanting to use it to grow. How specific are these fungal associations? Is the orchid waiting for a specific fungus to come along, or is it more general that any fungus will do?

Dr. Lynnaun Johnson: Because of the vast diversity of the orchid family, there is just a wide variety of orchids that have specific fungi for their germination, and others you can germinate them with numerous fungi. And so one of the studies that I did for my research was looking at this Florida orchid called the ghost orchid, and the ghost orchid just uses one fungus for its germination. But I was reading a paper the other day, and in Australia there's different orchids that can have multiple fungi to germinate them.

Melissa Petruzzello: Okay. You called it “parasitizing.” Does the fungus get anything out of this or is it not really a mutualism? It's more a one way street?

Dr. Lynnaun Johnson: Question is debatable right now. The thing with studying orchids, and just science in general, there is, uh, some people who believe that it's a parasitic relationship that the orchid has for the fungi, and as the orchid grows and starts to photosynthesize, then it will not rely on the fungus. I know studying fungi that there is the potential for the symbiotic relationship where the fungus will provide the orchid with nutrients and then the orchid will provide the fungi with carbon that it will produce through photosynthesis.

Melissa Petruzzello: As you mentioned, you studied rare ghost orchids in Florida and their mycorrhizal germination and growth and stuff. The ghost orchid is pretty famous; for its, uh, ephemeral beauty and white blooms. It's in that movie Adaptation, isn't it? Yeah, okay, that what I thought. What can you tell us about the threats that orchids, like the ghost orchid and others, face?

Dr. Lynnaun Johnson: So orchids, and I guess species that are rare, face many different threats. And so I guess the biggest one for the ghost orchid that I'm studying in southwest Florida, or my previous research, was habitat loss. If you think of the Everglades, the orchid itself will grow in these swampy regions in southwest Florida, and over time, within the last hundred years, most of that has been turned into cities. And there's also different natural disasters. Hurricanes for example, will come through Florida and sort of destroy some of the orchids in south Florida. And one of the biggest threats that most scientists have realized is climate change. And so with that happening, we can expect that the orchid might not have the suitable habitat to grow within the swamps of Florida. So yeah, there's many different threats. I guess the biggest human threat is poaching. Most people love to collect orchids, and some people will go out, and I guess that's what the movie Adaptation is about, in part. It just shows that people are willing to pay a price and collect these orchids. And if you follow up and do your due diligence to make sure you're not feeding into that system of poaching, then we can help to conserve more of the orchids in nature.

Melissa Petruzzello: Sure. Yeah. It's always so hard to hear about the actual causes that are harming our planet’s special plants. I actually live in Florida myself, in Miami, and, uh, yeah, many, many, as you said, of our local orchids were harvested from the wild to be sold as novelties, uh, elsewhere, both historically and still going on. I'm in this group on Facebook called “Swamp Hikers,” and people will post photos of the ghost orchid and they're always very careful, I appreciate it, to not say where they saw that one, uh, so that, you know, poachers don't go in and take it out. And I know that one of our local botanic gardens, the Fairchild Tropical Garden, is working on reintroducing one million orchids back into south Florida. They're actually trying to do urban reintroductions. It's a really wonderful and ambitious undertaking, but I heard a talk at the garden where one of their scientists said that some of their big patrons for the project were actually folks who themselves had casually collected orchids from the wild in their youth and now they're trying to appease their guilty consciences by aiding in their restoration. So I'm glad to know there are people out there trying to right their ecological wrongs. Wild things definitely belong in the wild.
But back to the fungi, how do fungal associations, you know, since the orchids need the funguses, the fungi, to germinate, how does that affect conservation efforts? If an orchid has been locally extincted, is it hard to reintroduce it since it needs that special fungal friend?

Dr. Lynnaun Johnson: Yes, at times it can be very difficult to sort of make a decision on how to reintroduce some of these orchids. So I guess I'll give you a little bit of a history on myself. I first got into studying orchids through my undergrad at Illinois College and working with, I guess, a famous orchid biologist, Dr. Lawrence Zettler. He works with re-introducing orchids all over North America. And one of the debates we had was whether to introduce an orchid that had been germinated with a fungus that came from the mainland North America. So we had to decide whether to take that fungus with the germinated orchid seed to put it back into its natural habitat in Hawaii. And so some people would, I guess, conclude that, “okay, we have a Hawaiian orchid, it needs to be repopulated into its natural habitat. We'll take that chance of taking this fungus that isn’t native to Hawaii so the orchid can grow.” And Dr. Zettler made the decision that he wouldn't take the orchid there because with the fungus being introduced into Hawaii, we don't know the, all of the downstream effects of the fungus causing harm to the different plants on the Hawaiian Islands. Some of these fungi, they're very pathogenic to other species, even though they're not harmful to the orchid. And so I think the best thing to do is to look for other avenues of trying to reintroduce those orchids. We had to spend, I think, a year or two, and we tried different media with nutrients and fertilizers to germinate the orchid seeds, which, if you’re not using a fungus, it takes twice as long. And so, yeah, it's, it's kind of sad because my senior year, I grew all the orchid seeds using different kinds of media, and when I graduated, they were still, they were probably less than a foot tall, and they waited two more years to actually take them over to Hawaii. And so I kind of missed my Hawaiian trip, but it's okay.

Melissa Petruzzello: Well, you contributed though. It's really amazing, the story you just shared about, uh, you know, you feel like restoration should just be so clear cut and just a positive thing always, but when you, when your restoration might involve a novel introduction, you know, that's definitely a complicated issue. Conservation and restoration are never simple undertakings.

Dr. Lynnaun Johnson: Oh, you definitely don't want to add more harm to these fragile ecosystems.

Melissa Petruzzello: For sure, yeah. And Hawaii is so closed and isolated over there, it already has so many invasives. It's really, really quite amazing, the complexity and nuances that you have shed a light on today for orchid biology. It really is surprising and, and lovely, to know that these really beautiful organisms are completely intertwined with something so earthy and humble as fungi. I mean, who would have guessed? As an orchid biologist and conservationist, are there any takeaways you would like to leave for our audience? Any suggestions for how people can get involved or what they can do to learn more?

Dr. Lynnaun Johnson: Oh, definitely. So I like to tell people they should get involved with, um, their native orchid societies. There's different orchid societies all over. Um, one that I've usually been in contact with is the Illinois Orchid Society and that's in Chicago. Usually when people are interested in growing orchids, they turn to the American Orchid Society's website. That's usually important. And there's an initiative that was started a few years ago by the Smithsonian, and this is the North American Orchid Conservation Center. And so if you are interested in helping with conservation for your local orchids, or just North American orchids in general, then there's a very in depth website, it's of the same name: NorthAmericanOrchidCenter.org. And you can find lots of different information and find out lots of different, um, organizations that are in partnership with helping to conserve orchids.

Melissa Petruzzello: Wonderful, those are, those are really excellent suggestions. And as you mentioned, people growing orchids. It's come up several times in different episodes, but I really think that gardening and horticulture is a great way to like, just start dipping your toes into, you know, a certain group of plants or whatever. And of course, you know, orchids are so beautiful who wouldn't want them in their home and garden?

Well, thank you so much, Lynnaun, for sharing your expertise today. I really learned so much and I'm sure our listeners will never look at orchids the same. I really appreciate you taking the time to chat with me today.

Dr. Lynnaun Johnson: Oh yeah. So it was definitely a pleasure talking with you. Hopefully I was able to share a lot of my passion with everyone. So, everyone remember that orchids and fungi are very important!

Melissa Petruzzello: They sure are! I just loved learning about their intertwined relationships and it's not something I ever would have guessed, so thank you so much for shedding a light on it.

For Britannica's Botanize! I'm Melissa Petruzzello and I was joined today by Dr. Lynnaun Johnson. You have just listened to episode nine, “The Orchid and the Fungus,” which was produced by Kurt Heintz. Until next time, maybe spend a few mindful minutes orchid-gazing and, as always, stay curious.

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