The beautiful Green-winged orchid (Anacamptis morio) is not common nowadays, but nevertheless widely distributed across the southern U.K. It likes damp, unimproved meadows, and also chalky downland in some instances. It is one of my favourites of all our wild orchids.
The seeds can be germinated readily in vitro with the B1 Ceratobasidium fungus on oats-medium agar, during autumn. The small protocorms soon develop a shoot which heads rapidly upwards and necessitates early transfer from Petri dish to jam jar for more headroom.
Thereafter they grow two or three leaves that gradually broaden and become a fairly flat rosette during the spring.
At this point I have always, in the past, transferred them into soil in pots to grow on until early-mid summer. Then the leaves die back, and the hope is they have formed a nice little tuber underground. Next year’s growth will emerge from it, typically in September but sometimes even late August. It is very likely that sharply cooler nights at this time of year are an important trigger.
Early potting into soil does work, but lately I have experimented with leaving them in their jam jars an extra year. There are several potential advantages; they are more cosseted from weather etc and protected from slugs while the leaves are still very small. Also there is no risk of them losing the fungus, the leaves seem to stay green a bit longer, and you can actually see the tuber that develops.
The second photo shows a jar where seedlings have been kept growing since winter 2023, ie at least a year and a half. Among the died-back leaves you can see two new leaves have just sprouted. This follows a couple of nights of temperatures down to 10 and 7 degrees C recently. Also there is a healthy (and hairy!) –looking tuber beneath.
I do plan to pot these seedlings up this autumn, once they are all in the green. (Or should I leave some of them in jar until spring or for another year, just to see what happens?)
Photos: 1. Green winged orchid, 2. Green winged orchid tuber with new leaves
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