Orchids underground: a beautiful parasite

March 25, 2015 6:31 AM

In 1928, a farmer digging in his garden found a flower blooming underground. Three years ago, scientists discovered that it's so well adapted to living underground that it has lost almost all of its chloroplast genes. While this species is unusual for an orchid in the extent of its parasitism, it turns out that all orchids are actually parasites--stealing nitrogen from tiny fungi in the soil without trading any carbon back as plants usually do. See photos of the underground orchid here.
posted by sciatrix (31 comments total)

Fascinating! I love it when I learn about something new to me and so totally unexpected. I wonder what other orchids are out there lurking nearby, waiting to be discovered.
posted by TedW at 6:49 AM on March 25, 2015 [2 favorites]

Wow! Really fascinating post, thanks sciatrix!
posted by clockzero at 6:50 AM on March 25, 2015

Man, orchids are weird.
posted by Faint of Butt at 7:00 AM on March 25, 2015 [5 favorites]

In reality, the western undergound orchid parisitizes the fungus which then parasitizes the broom honeymyrtle, although at a mutualistic level in this last case. So we have a parasite parasitizing another parasite.

Huh. Neat.
posted by clawsoon at 7:03 AM on March 25, 2015 [2 favorites]

Super cool. Love stuff like this!
posted by Sophie1 at 7:07 AM on March 25, 2015

So we have a parasite parasitizing another parasite.
Huh. Neat.

A meta-parasite, as it were.

it is the first plant and the only known case of a plant that uses termites as pollinator agents.

A bit of trivia to store away for future use.
posted by TedW at 7:13 AM on March 25, 2015 [7 favorites]

Endemic to Western Australia . . .

Figures.

Are we absolutely sure that Oz isn't actually neither a continent nor an island but an asteroid fragment of an alien planet that came here from -- outside?

Possibly piloted by dinosaurs.
posted by Herodios at 7:18 AM on March 25, 2015 [18 favorites]

This is the setup to an Edgar Allen Pie story if ever I heard one.
posted by Ipsifendus at 7:18 AM on March 25, 2015 [3 favorites]

I'll have a slice, please.
 
posted by Herodios at 7:26 AM on March 25, 2015 [4 favorites]

Those are neat looking, thanks! Also, learning that all orchids are parasites makes even more sense when I remember that they were my grandmother's favorite flowers. I loved her and she was...quite a character, and I think it's fair to say she took nitrogen from tiny fungi without giving any carbon back where "nitrogen" is "attention, "tiny fungi" is "everyone" and "carbon" is "emotional support or positivity". As I say, I loved her very much and she was actually a wonderful grandmother, much better as a grandmother than she was as a person, but she was a challenging orchid.
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 7:35 AM on March 25, 2015 [11 favorites]

The spokesperson from The Southern Reach is unavailable for comment.
posted by sparklemotion at 7:45 AM on March 25, 2015 [4 favorites]

Incredible; wonderful -- fantastic post.

Images 7 and 8 disturb me.
posted by jamjam at 7:47 AM on March 25, 2015

In reality, the western undergound orchid parisitizes the fungus which then parasitizes the broom honeymyrtle, although at a mutualistic level in this last case. So we have a parasite parasitizing another parasite.

As a mushroom-loving Broom, I'm not sure how I feel about this.
posted by IAmBroom at 7:52 AM on March 25, 2015 [3 favorites]

The first link says the underground orchid is "able to convert the water, nutrients and carbon dioxide into the energy needed for growth and maintenance." Plants normally use carbon dioxide in photosynthesis - what is the mechanism here with the underground plant essentially devoid of chlorophyll?
posted by exogenous at 7:56 AM on March 25, 2015 [2 favorites]

Images 7 and 8 disturb me.

You definitely don't want to click this thread, then.
posted by jbickers at 8:00 AM on March 25, 2015

I wonder, though, whether this particular orchid is really stealing nitrogen from tiny fungi, because if the honey broom myrtle is like other myrtles, it gets its nitrogen from nitrogen-fixing actinomycete bacteria associated with its roots rather than fungi.
posted by jamjam at 8:01 AM on March 25, 2015 [2 favorites]

Herodios: "Possibly piloted by dinosaurs."

...Paging Dr. McNinja...
posted by notsnot at 8:04 AM on March 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

Awesome post.

And next time someone gets all up in my grill about how great their prize-winning orchid collection is, I can be all like "Pfft. They're just parasites."
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 8:09 AM on March 25, 2015 [3 favorites]

Due to this peculiar association, this particular underground orchid is a called a myco-heterotroph relying totally on the broom honeymyrtle and on the fungus

"Mycoheterotroph" is:
a. My new favourite word.
b. My new band.
c. A phase I went through in college.
 
posted by Herodios at 8:10 AM on March 25, 2015 [4 favorites]

I was going to suggest "Underground Orchid" as a band name, but someone already got there.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 8:12 AM on March 25, 2015

Orchids are inheritly sinister.
posted by The Whelk at 8:55 AM on March 25, 2015 [3 favorites]

I had no idea there were underground flowers. Nature, you so crazy.
posted by tavella at 9:24 AM on March 25, 2015 [2 favorites]

But what pollinates it!?!


I love this post.
posted by Made of Star Stuff at 9:51 AM on March 25, 2015

Oh! Termites! AWESOME. Termite are actually just cockroaches so this orchid is pollinated by eusocial cockroaches and I LOVE NATURE.
posted by Made of Star Stuff at 9:52 AM on March 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

Neat post! It made me think of Monotropa uniflora, which also lacks chlorophyll and obtains its food from other plants via soil fungi residing around their roots. In the case of M. uniflora that are found in North America, the plants are often pine or spruce trees, and the fungi include members of the brightly coloured genus Russula. Here's a paper with more details.
posted by bismol at 10:21 AM on March 25, 2015 [5 favorites]

For me it brought to mind hypomyces lactifluorum, which attacks members of the Russula genus (Lactarius too) and turns them into tasty zombie mushrooms.

A friend of mine turned me on to lobster mushroom picking a couple of years ago. Delicious.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 10:44 AM on March 25, 2015 [3 favorites]

MetaFilter: a meta-parasite, as it were.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 12:49 PM on March 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

Made of Star Stuff: "But what pollinates it!?! "

Mole people. Technically mole human-bee hybrids. Ably played by Sean Bean.
posted by stet at 1:11 PM on March 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

Ably played by Sean Bean.

N-n-no, pretty sure it was Daniel Day Lewis.
 
posted by Herodios at 2:29 PM on March 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

Generally indistinguishable until they reach their fruiting stage.
posted by IAmBroom at 2:46 PM on March 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

Herodios: Are we absolutely sure that Oz isn't actually neither a continent nor an island but an asteroid fragment of an alien planet that came here from -- outside?

Well, a couple hundred million years ago Pangaea split into Gondwana and Laurasia, causing a lot of the land-based life to start diverging evolutionarily. But then Gondwana itself broke apart and several of its pieces—South America, Africa, India—smacked back into contact with the pieces of former Laurasia, re-establishing some continuity of their habitats and lifeforms. (One consequence was that almost all of South America's marsupials went extinct, wiped out by North America's placental mammals. Only the opossums survived.)

Another big piece, Antarctica, drifted south and grew a permanent ice cap, driving most of its life extinct. So Australia is the largest of a set of scattered islands that represent the only surviving remnant of what you could call a "Gondwana geoevolutionary family" of land life. Everyplace else has some amount of the Laurasia family mixed in there*. The past is truly another country planet.

*Typical caveats apply. Nature is messy.
posted by traveler_ at 1:54 AM on March 26, 2015 [3 favorites]