My neighbor is from Guatemala. He tells me that there are orchids everywhere and I should go with him the next time he returns for a visit. I'd really like to... and it's not that expensive... but I can't help but think of the opportunity cost. As in... dang, I could buy a lot of orchids with that money.
I killed Dendrobium striolatum. Probably didn't give it enough water. Right now I have a large plant of Dendrobium teretifolium crossed with Dendrobium prenticei. I wouldn't have thought that the cross was possible... but it's a happy camper. I really need to divide the heck out of it. I hate having too many eggs in one basket. What I particular like about the cross is that it makes aerial roots. D. teretifolium doesn't make aerial roots... and prenticei really doesn't have a reason to. It's super hard to share divisions of D. teretifolium.
My next-door neighbor is Filipino and he wants me to attach orchids to the large fig tree in his front yard. There's no fence between our front yards and his tree branches into my yard. So if I attach orchids to his tree... then he waters the orchids. Or I water the orchids. Or we both water the orchids. Or neither of us water the orchids (aka tragedy of the commons?).
If I lived in Guatemala then I'd attach orchids to all my neighbors' trees. I'd also be sowing orchid seeds on all the trees.
My uncle lives in Southern Texas... only a few hours drive from where Laelia anceps naturally occurs. Last year I sent him some orchids... including L. anceps... and he attached them on the trees in his front yard and on the trees in his neighbor's front yard. I'm super curious to see how they will do. There aren't any naturally occurring epiphytic orchids in Southern Texas and I'm wondering if it's because of the cold and/or dryness.
One time I e-mailed a biologist who studies orchids and asked him about helping to gradually enlarge the distribution of orchids like Laelia anceps. He answered that he certainly helps to remount worthwhile orchids that have fallen out of trees... but that trying to move a species outside its native range is "tricky". He didn't argue that it shouldn't be done.... he mostly discussed whether it was even possible to do so.... ie absence of suitable fungus, pollinators, climate and so on. I was pretty unsatisfied with his answer. If it can't be done then whether it should be done is a moot point. Not sure if that makes sense so I'll give an extreme example... it's silly to argue against introducing Laelia anceps to Antarctica.
Dang, I found and collected a relevant passage a while ago but it sure wasn't in my collection of relevant passages! Finally managed to refind it...
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The absence of [Dendrobium johannis var. semifuscum] from the mainland of the Northern Territory and its presence on Melville and Bathurst islands leads to the speculation that it might have been introduced to the islands by Macassamen (trepang fishermen) who were known to plant all manner of things on some of the places they visited during their travels. - A. W. Dockrill, Australian Indigenous Orchids
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I'm not sure why, exactly, they would have bothered to take this orchid with them. I sure love it but I'm not sure why they might have loved it.
While searching through my database for this passage I also found the term for helping to expand the range of an orchid such as Laelia anceps...
assisted colonization. The logic being that some plants can't keep up with the rate of climate change. The counterargument being the same for any introductions of nonnative plants.
In theory... as a family... orchids should be pretty much the best at keeping up with climate change. This is because the large quantity of seeds that they produce really helps them to hedge their bets.
Here's the same concept applied to human colonization of other planets...
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A population of 500 people would not be sufficient either, Smith says. "Five hundred people picked at random today from the human population would not probably represent all of human genetic diversity . . . If you're going to seed a planet for its entire future, you want to have as much genetic diversity as possible, because that diversity is your insurance policy for adaptation to new conditions." - Sarah Fecht, How Many People Does It Take to Colonize Another Star System?
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... and applied back to plants...
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The more seedlings you grow, the more variation you’ll see, the better your choices to select from will be, and the greater the likelihood of getting those one or two rare but really fabulous outliers. - John Boggan, Strength in numbers
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Even though orchids might be the best at adapting to climate change... this really doesn't guarantee that they will be good enough.
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