This coming Saturday some of the members of the Houston Orchid Society are going out to the Piney Woods of East Texas to search for some native orchids. It will be my third time. Last year we started a project to polinate, set seed and harvest the endangered Cypripedium kentuckyense. We have seedlings now (I have one, since last week, it is about 7-8 cm high, two leaves). The plan is to repopulate these orchids into the habitat in a couple of years. We have a grant, not from AOS, nor HOS, but another group, to cover our costs of flasking and replating.
We also observed an abortive polination of one plant in bloom when a bumblebee dove into the pouch of the only flower in the vicinity. Boy, was it upset! Tring to get out, it was too big to pass behind the staminode and take pollen. Instead the clever little thing did a perfect vertical climb out of the center and just barely cleared the edges of the pouch.
This is the very orchid we then selfed and got the seed pod a couple of months later.
I guess this makes me a father... sort of.
I'll keep everybody posted on the trip after I get back.
Ted

There were two this Saturday, only one the first time we went. The first was in great condition, newly opened, with a flower just opening next to it (which we did not pollinate becasue Cyps do not mature the pollen until two or three days after opening). The second site had extremely damaged plants: a flood had washed cubic yards of fine sand all over the place, and the plants were cut off at about 12" (30 cm) eliminating most blooms for the season. There was one damaged flower that still had pollen so we selfed it, but the others, what a loss for this season. It is another reason why we must continue our efforts at re-introducing plants into that environment: the numbers are not sufficent to guarantee neither cross pollination nor continuation of the species in situ.
Ted

Here is a pic of one of the pollinated flowers.
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