orchid mycorhiza

[victoria]

can anyone help me i am doing a research project for college on the propagation of hardy orchids,with the use of mycorhizal fungi which i joined the hardy orchid soceity whom advertised a fungi bank, which after joining found out there was no fungi, i now need to find a sourse of fungi?
Can anyone help?
Victoria

[Maggi Young]

Hello, Victoria, welcome to the Forum.
How interesting.... which college do you attend? 
Quite a few of the folks around the Forum do grow hardy orchids and I suppose the simplest way to get you some of the associated fungi would be to collect some soil samples from around some plants ....there are a few hitches likely, however.... firstly, at this time of year and with freezing temperatures, I doubt that too many are willing to disturb their overwintering orchids to collect soil.

Secondly, what type of orchids are you investigating? It is my understanding that different species may have a requirement for differing mycorhizal partners.

I would have thought that the Folks at the Hardy Orchid Society would be the ones with more info on these matters , even without a "funghi bank"!!

Have you thought of approaching any of the commercial orchid growers? They may have a source of funghi for thier needs which might also serve your purposes?

[Paul Cumbleton]

Hi Victoria,
Another possible source of help would be to contact those involved in the Sainsbury orchid project at Kew Gardens, which is concerned precisely with using mycorhizal fungi for raising hardy orchids in vitro. The project leader is Margaret Ramsay and I believe her email is m.ramsay@kew.org

Good luck!

Paul

[Giles]

....and remember that the President of the Hardy Orchid Society is at Kew himself, (so you should have no problems!!!)

[Anthony Darby]

Welcome to the Forum Victoria. You are among friends here, and within half a day you have had some fantastic suggestions. Good luck with your project. I'm sure many people would be interested to find out how you get on?

[Joakim B]

Depending on what sort of project You are doing an other possibility is to take some soil from different kind of forrest beech, pine  etc and see how well the different soils work. The soils always have mycorhizal fungi and most is probably usefull as orchid seed food supplier since a lot is just leaking of food to the soil by the fungus. Some are for sure better than others but probably most help.
An interesting project You have and as Anthony said a lot here are interested in Your findings.
All the beat
Joakim

[Gerhard Raschun]

Dear Victoria,
some years ago I have worked mainly with the symbiotic propagation to raise terrestrial orchids.At the time at the Uni I have tried to proved the possibility of the cross di- with tertaploid Nigritella ssp.

There are a lot of lectures, which describe the methode to search symbiotic funghi.It is the wrong way to use soil.The best is to find young seedlings, as small as possible (protocorm) , in the nature.

In the cells of this seedlings you find the pelotons of the right funghi.The different funghi should be tested, only view are suited to work with.Many of them promote germination, but only view further growth.

For best results the fungus should isolated from the same species, which you want to propagate.

You should contact R. Manual from the Hardy Orchid Society, he works with the same methode.Probably he is able to support your work with tested isolates.

Sorry, my English isn`t  perfect, it is difficult for me to explain, but I can help to find the lectures where all steps are described.

At the moment I work mainly with asymbiotic methode, only when flask get an infection I remove to symbiotic cultures.

best Gerhard

[Craig]

Hello Victoria,
It seems like you've had some good suggestions so far. I would also try (if you haven't alraedy) the nice folks on the Terrestrial Orchid Forum: http://forum.terrorchid.org/ &  Dr. Heinrich Beyrle who produces some great plants using mycorhiza: http://www.myorchids.de/main1.htm.
Good Luck & keep us posted about your endeavours 

Craig

[victoria]

 Hi i initially wanted to grow adult plants some grown with mycorhiza and some without, to compare if the fungi had a beneficial relationship past seedling stage and if this helped establishment.

i contacted hardy orchid soceity whom i obtained seeds but i need more, and was hoping to attend a meeting last year unfortunately no tickets were left, so i could not ask advice?

a nursery called laneside nurseries whom i met the owner at Harrogate spring flower show last year he was going to sell me some adult orchids some grown with mycorhizal fungi some without but he let me down.

i did obtain some plants where iwas working at the time looked after them while i went on holiday i returned they were dead, so then i had to have go to plan b to grow without micropropagation and see if it possible to grow common spotted orchid and a few other hardy terrestrial orchids with fungi to see if it is possible to germinate with/without mycorhizal fungi.
 i bought rootgrow but it does not contain rhizoctonia fungi which i need, so some germinated but died, and the grower from laneside nurseries is the only supplier of plants grown with/without mycorhizal fungi. from a grower svante melgrem.
so i have had a lot of setbacks i only have till end of April, so i wanted to try and obtain some fungi then have another go i know there is a conservation site near where i live growing common spotted orchid, but i am unsure about asking to obtain fungi?
Thanks Victoria.

[Craig]

Sounds like very little time for observation Victoria. Are you intending to isolate & culture the fungus & then sow the seeds ?
Follow up some of the suggestions above & you might be able to locate some pre-cultured mycorhiza & some good advice in the process. There are other sources of hardy terrestrials in this country, such as http://www.hardyorchids.co.uk/, http://www.orchidsbypost.co.uk/ & http://www.simplyspecies.co.uk/Docs/orchids/. I think Svante tends to sow asymbioticaly anyway, so you were unlikely to get any mycorhiza from his stuff, although he does use soil that could possibly have them present.
If you're capable of isolating something useful from soil where orchids are found growing, I wouldn't have thought it wouldn't be that difficult to get permission for a small sample if you explain what you're trying to do.

Good Luck

[gote]

Try Dieter Hach.  Dieter.hach@berlin.de
He germinates terrestial orchids sucessfully using fungi.
Try to google 'Pinkepank'. I do not remember how he does it but he might use fungi.
Göte

[Maggi Young]

a nursery called laneside nurseries whom i met the owner at Harrogate spring flower show last year he was going to sell me some adult orchids some grown with mycorhizal fungi some without but he let me down.

I have been in contact with Jeff Hutchings, of Laneside Alpine & Hardy Orchid Nursery who is unhappy that negative comments about his business have been made here by Victoria. He explains that he had made every effort to assist her in this project that was always going to be very difficult to achieve.

Jeff tells me "I am disappointed that Victoria believes I let her down. I spent some time trying to obtain suitable orchids which would give acceptable results. Our first meeting was at the end of April which ruled out growing them and carrying out measurements during last summer. I did explain the difficulties of trying to carry out an orchid study over a one year period starting at that time.
 
I tried to obtain two samples of the same species grown from seed by the two different methiods in the autumn but was unable to get what was necessary. There are only a limited number of growers with any quantity of plants available in Europe.
 
College tutors should be aware that using orchids as a project subject is not advisable as the length of time it takes to grow them and the complications of even getting seed to germinate requires more skill than any trainee horticulturalist is likely to have."

 I must agree with Jeff when he says that at best this would have been a 12 month college project.  It seems Victoria was badly advised to even try this. I do hope that this thread will prove of help to any student to get full professional advice before emarking upon what may well be a goose chase..... there is lots of help out there, but plants are growing things and nature can seldom be hurried!