Growing orchids from seed using a mycorrhizal soil supplement??

[klauts]

thanks i just finished reading through the thread and it was quite excellent helped me alot

[Andrew]

Originally Posted by klauts

ok thanks do you know the name of the specific fungus needed and i cant seem to find the turkish towel method anywhere if someone could point me to it it would be greatly appreciated
Best regards,
klauts

There's no specific fungi that will germinate all orchids. Different orchids will germinate with different fungi. While there are fungi like Tulasnella calospora that are symbiotic with a wide range of orchids and punch above their weight in terms of the number of orchid species they can germinate in symbiotic flasks, they don't germinate all species and can vary in how well they'll germinate the species they can germinate. With the exception of B2, which a lot of symbiotic flaskers in Europe seem to use, orchid mycorrhizal inoculates are fairly limited in their availability and tend to have been selected for their ability to germinate terrestrial species rather than epiphytes.

Yes, the Turkish towel method is the one Undergrounder talks about in the Redneck flasking thread. I've only ever heard about it in relation to germinating the local native species and I don't have first hand experience using it: I flask my epiphytes asymbiotically so I haven't bothered to try it. It does assume that the appropriate fungi are in the roots of plants in cultivation but at least there's a better chance of the seeds coming into contact with fungi than trying to guess whether a given fungal inoculate is going to work or not.

[DavidCampen]

From "The Classic Cattleyas" by Chadwick and Chadwick:
"Back in the 1800s and early 1900s, cattleyas were grown from seed by shaking the seed onto pots filled with peat and topped with wet burlap ... with a glass or bell jar over them ... The seedling mortality from this system was horrendous ... All this began to change, however, in 1922 when a young Cornell University researcher named Lewis Knudson published the results of his experiments with sterilized cultures for growing orchid seed. Knudson sowed his cattleya seed in sterilized flasks on laboratory agar ... His initial objective was to find out if newly germinated cattleya seedlings had to be infected with a natural fungus to make them grow - a commonly held belief by botanists in the 1920s. ... Knudson carried his experiments to their logical conclusion and , after seven years of growth in a completely sterilized environment, a Laeliocattleya hybrid actually flowered in a sterilized 12 liter flask."

[calypsoB]

Great thread. Another point which may be important is that some species of orchids undergo a fungus switch during the teenage years so what they have as adults may not be the same as when they are seedlings. You can also grow them on an agar plate with the mycorhizae. Good luck and report back!