How are Phalaenopsis pollination in the Wild??

[estación seca]

Originally Posted by epiphyte78

My friend and I were just talking about pollination. I mentioned that honeybees aren't native to the Americas and I wondered how many native orchids they successfully and regularly pollinate. Then we started talking about how Phalaenopsis are by far the most commonly grown orchid here in the Americas. I told my friend that I haven't heard of any of them being naturally pollinated here. So we wondered who naturally pollinates them in their native habitat. I searched for "natural pollination of Phalaenopsis" and found this thread.

According to the Wikipedia entry for Phalaenopsis amabilis, it's pollinated by "large carpenter bees from the genus Xylocopa". So maybe our carpenter bees aren't large enough? Or they aren't interested? Or perhaps the Phalaenopsis hybrids are larger than amabilis?

Personally I'm pretty sure that hummingbirds have pollinated my Dendrobium bigibbum and Dendrobium teretifolium and some other species that aren't native to the Americas. I wish that I was a vampire so that I could see how the mix of nonnative and native species and pollinators would influence the orchid family over time.

A vampire would never see a hummingbird pollinating a flower. We have carpenter bees in the desert Southwest, but it's too hot to put blooming Phalaenopsis outside.

[epiphyte78]

Originally Posted by estación seca

A vampire would never see a hummingbird pollinating a flower. We have carpenter bees in the desert Southwest, but it's too hot to put blooming Phalaenopsis outside.

I think you stopped reading/watching vampire stuff in the 70s! But even if I couldn't see a hummingbird pollinate a flower, which would certainly be a big sacrifice, because I LOVE hummingbirds, it would be totally worth the gigantic benefit of learning how they evolve orchids and are evolved by orchids. Plus, I could still watch moths pollinate orchids.

Where you live it's ridiculously hot. But how many Phalaenopsis are outside year around in the tropics? Mascia offered a nice example of Phalaenopsis growing outside in Brazil. I haven't heard of any of them being naturally pollinated.

On the other hand, check out how naturally pollinated my friend's Mystacidium capense was here in South California.

It's an interesting coincidence that Phalaenopsis, which are by far the most commonly grown orchid, aren't naturally pollinated here in the Americas. And it's not like all their flowers are the same exact size, shape or color. Imagine if they were as naturally pollinated as my friend's Mystacidium capense. Dense swarms of seeds would be flying everywhere. Whether they germinated would depend on the availability of a suitable fungus.

Phalaenopsis won't always be the most commonly grown orchid. It can and will eventually be displaced by some other orchid... which may or may not be naturally pollinated in the Americas. But when you have a larger supply of increasingly diverse orchids being exposed to a wide variety of pollinators, then it's a given that more and more suitable matches will be made... which will facilitate the orchids' conquest of space.

[estación seca]

Originally Posted by epiphyte78

I think you stopped reading/watching vampire stuff in the 70s!

Well, to be honest, in the first and greatest Dracula novel, sunlight didn't bother Vlad, nor the other vampires he made, in the least. Anne Rice popularized the notion of vampires who couldn't tolerate sunlight.

Vampire stories have never been about sucking blood. They didn't tell us that in high school literature when we read Dracula and The Castle of Otranto. After Stoker's last novel his friends told him he had gone too far. (In the Lair of the White Worm.)