One of the real pleasures of having a greenhouse is escaping those cold gloomy winter days into your own little tropical paradise. This morning I escaped to Brazil thanks to Sophronitis cernua. I had the pleasure of seeing this species in the wild on our last school expedition to the Brazilian costal forest (Mata Atlantica) in 2006. It grows in dryish forest at around 800m altitude and so we grow it with a minimum temperature of 15 degrees Celcius. As you can see from the plant photograph we grow it mounted rather than in a pot. About nine years ago we tied a seedling to a piece of cork and as you can see the plant has grown to completely cover the mount. This year it is flowering really well. This species is pollinated by humming birds. 

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 No not the snow, Dendrobium wattii. Some orchids have the most amazingly crisp white flowers and this Christmas the best white is this stunning Dendrobium native to the Eastern Himalayas of Burma, Thailand and Laos. It is another cool grower and we keep it at a minimum of 10 degrees C. The orange stripes on the lip are guides to the pollinating bees although this may well be a deceipt poliator as are many long lasting orchids. The flower provides no pollinator reward such as nectar and relies on mimicry or naive pollinators. Research has shown that the closely related species Dendrobium infundibulum mimics a white Rhododendron species. Well, trick flower or not, Dendrobium wattii has won me over.

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 Writhlington School may be closed for the holiday but the plants in the school greenhouses never take a break. In fact, christmas is a lovely time with lots of plants flowering in the run up to our peak time in March. Most of the plants we grow are cooler growing orchids native to the tropical slopes of mountains like the Himilayas or Andes. The majority of these species flower in the dry season (winter and spring). The current impact plants in our cool end (minimum 7-10 degrees celcius)are the Mexican Laelias. Lealia anceps  is native to the mountains in South West Mexico where they grow on oak trees. With us they flower reliably every christmas with long sprays of bright pink flowers. We find the species is easy to growand flower. In Mexico it is used as a central part of the Day of the Dead (El Dia de los Muertos) celebrations. Whether you celebrate El Dia de los Muertos or not, we recommend you have a try at growing Laelia anceps.

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 Today was the last day of school so greenhouse club joined the rest of the school in a massive talent show. Catch Zoe, Ike, Luke, Heather and Simon doing their mad unicycle act on the orchid project website. Thanks also to Luke on Music and Caroline in a cockroach costume. After that we spent a last lunch time in the greenhouse. We will really miss the orchids over chrismas but we will soon be back. Happy Christmas everyone.

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Unfortunately tomorow is the last day of school, and that also means the last official day of greenhouse club this year. This year has been a blast and we like nothing more at the end of a year than to share all that we have done this past year with you. we have been going around all the people that have been coming to greenhouse club for the past year and asking them what thier highlights of the past twelve months have been. Now there is nothing left to do but tell you about them. Heather says ''learning to unicycle and joining th club". Caroline says "the OCI meeting where I first talked about my masdevallias"  Zoe B says "I most enjoyed going to Durbun" Nathan says "The trips have been really interesting". Mr Pugh Jones"My high points was working with the schools in Gangtok, Sikkim" Luke and Ben say "Winning a gold at Chelsea was the best". 2010 is going to even better because we will be moving into the new greenhouse, look at it now. Happy Christmas to everyone, Heather, Zoe and Caroline                                                     

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Madagascar is home to some amazing orchid species and Angraecum leonis  is one of them. In our last blog you saw this at a distance and here it is close up. The fan shaped plant is 20cm across and the 5cm flowers are bourne singly on short stems over a long period. The flowers are white and night scented to attract pollinating hawk moths and the nectar is held in the lower part of a long spur (curled tube) visible at the back of the flower. A high proportion of Madagascar's epiphytic orchids are moth pollinated. This particular plant came out of it's jar in the school lab about five years agao and this is it's second flowering. We can now expect flowers every year and species like this can be very long lived. In the new glasshouses we will have a section dedicated to species from this facinating Island.

 

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Madagascar is home to an amazing flora with about 1000 orchid species most of which occur nowhere else. At Writhlington we are very excited to be getting involved in helping in the conservation of some of these amazing plants. This photo shows Jack from Greenhouse club talking to Stuart Cable who is head of Kew's Madagascar team and he has been down to Writhlington to discuss ways in which we can support him and his work with Madagascans to conserve orchids. We have lots of exciting ideas so watch this space and see what happens over the next few years. The orchid Jack and Stuart are looking at is Angraecum leoinis a Madagascan beauty we have grown in our propagation lab. We will take a photo and upload it later for you to have a closer look.

 

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Following the success of the Durban Conference BGCI (Botanic Gardens Conservation International) have been keen to work with Writhlington pupils to help develop projects linked to botanic gardens globally. This week we had a visit from Julia Willison (head of Education at BGCI) and Lauren Evans (BGCI Development Officer) and had a wonderful afternoon introducing them to Greenhouse club, our plants, our lab and our project. We are really looking forward to working together in the future. There are lots of wonderful plant conservation and education projects going on in botanic gardens and lots of these are featured on the BCGI website. In the picture here Zoe Parfit is showing Julia and Lauren some of our warm growing orchids including this Prosthechea garciana from Mexico.

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 This week's star orchid is Masdevallia minuta, a diminuative beauty from the cool moist forests of South America. It is found from Peru to Venezuala. Our plants flower every december and floweing lasts for a couple of glorious months.

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Every year Writhlington Students hold an orchid evening to celebrate the events of the previous twelve months. This year there will be two talks; Luke Barnes (on the right) will describe April's expedition to Sikkim, and then Zoes Barnes and Parfitt will relive their trip to Durban. The evening starts at 7pm on Monday 14th December and is open to all.

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 We add a rooting hormone called NAA to our growing media. NAA is Naphthaleneacetic Acid, an auxin that acts as a growth regulator. The seedlings below show the effect of this chemical on orchids in test tubes. The left hand seedling has no NAA added. The next two show increasing NAA results in an increase in root production and a resulting increased growth rate. However the fourth jar shows that higher levels of NAA can disturb the plants natural growth pattern and reduce overall growth. The right hand jar shows that high levels of NAA are toxic to plants. We use NAA partly to increase growth rates and partly to ensure that our seedlings have pleanty of roots for when they come out of their test tube and into a pot.

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Here's another experiment looking at the effect of nutrient levels for orchid seedlings in-vitro. Almost all GCSE students at Writhlington design and carry out experiments on orchids in test tubes and this is just one of this year's. From left to right the nutrient level increases in steps and this can be seen from the changing colour of the growing media. As you can see the seedling with no nutrient on the left has not grown and as the nutrient is increased the growth rate increases. On the right the nutrient level is too high preventing the roots from absorbing nutrient and water. The nutrient level we use in our lab is the middle jar. If you want to know more about our project visit the website or even come along to our Orchid Celebration Evening next monday at 7pm at the school.

 

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 At Writhlington School we grow orchids from seed in test tubes. We get a lot of questions about what we put in the the test tubes to grow the plants. Well here are some experiments to help you to see. The growing media contains water, sugar, plant food, and agar. This provides everything the growing seedlings need and the agar stiffens the growing media. The experiment above shows what happens if you change the amount of agar. With too little agar on the left the plants sink into the water and die. With too much agar on the right the plants can't get the water and nutrient from the very stiff growing media and they don't grow. The two in the middle show plants growing well in media that supports them and allows their roots to access the water and nutrients that the orchid needs. By the way, the seedlings are of Coelogyne usitana  from the Philippines.

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 Writhlington is buzzing this morningwith the news that the Orchid Project's laboratory manager, Luke Barnes, has made it to the finals of the National Science and Engineering competition (Young Scientist of the Year). Luke who is now in Year 11 carried out research on the orchid populations of the Sikkim Himalaya on the school expedition. His research shows that the populations are now growing at a higher altitude than they did in the 1890's and the altitude rise is in line with that to be expected from global warming. This research has significant implication for Himalayan flora especially the conservation of rare plants. Luke will give more datails about his research in later posts. This picture shows Luke taking GPS readings for orchid popuations in the mountains near Rabangla in South West Sikkim.

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 Hello!  I'm Luke Barnes, a Year 11 student at Writhlington School and the Orchid Project's Lab Manager.  Some of you may also know me as the blogger on our website http://wsbeorchids.org.uk.  We've been doing some experiments with our 'logo' lately (that's what we call our little green and white picture).  I had the idea that as a school project, with over 11 students and 11 letters, we could do something with A4 paper.  What I didn't count on was the weather - rain!  Not to be defeated, however, we got out the umbrellas and have quite a good looking logo substitute if I do say so myself!

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