By Luke Barnes | February 3, 2010
Aren’t bananas great! Slightly off topic I know, but a fact worth noting all the same! Who would have thought that one, such humble fruit would poses so many practical uses in the modern day world, and particularly to us orchid growers! For today’s post I have assembled the top three uses for bananas at the orchid project, shown below in decreasing importance.
1. Food
It is a well known fact that orchid growers need food! Take our bunch (no pun intended) at the orchid project. Together, they eat a very large amount of food – and some of this might be a banana…
2. Growing Media
Bananas have a unique combination of vitamins and minerals that orchids love – especially the young seedlings in the lab. That’s why four large bananas go into each batch of our agar jelly that we prepare for replating in the lab. The media also contains sugar, plant food and rooting hormone. All of this seems to give our seeds the best start possible.
3. Friction reducing devices
We’ve all seen it on a cartoon where one of the characters slips on a banana peel. We’ve all laughed, but have any of us actually tried it? We have! Through extensive testing we have concluded that banana skins are exceptionally good at making any object, regardless of mass, slide across the class room floor with ease!
Zoe and Heather demonstrating this amazing use of bananas!
Tests have shown that four pieces of banana peel, one under each leg of a stool, can easily carry a Year 7 (or 8,9,10 or 11) across the classroom floor! This technique is as effective with a table, in which case multiple students can be carried at once!
By Luke Barnes | February 1, 2010
Orchid seeds are incredible. One orchid seed pod can have up to 2.6 million seeds in. This is a brilliant survival technique for the orchid, but such an advantage comes at a price. Each orchid seed must be invaded by a mycorrhizal fungas. The orchid seed then uses the fungas to give it the energy for germination.
In our lab – we use agar jelly as a replacement for the fungas, meaning we can have every single seed germinate, where as only 10 may germinate in the wild. More information on our techniques can be found in our media libraries.
While in Cape Town in 2007 we linked with a school in the area, but also with local growers. Lorna in particular has been brilliant at supplying seed of the leopard orchid Anselia africana. When she e-mailed me a couple of weeks ago and first told me that she had 9 mature pods I was very excited! Anselia africana is a very nice plant that is easy to sow and grows well in our lab.
I was also eager to find out just what 9 seed pods worth of seed looked like! We were all very impressed when the envelope was packed full of seed. This is such a brilliant example Darwin’s prediction that, if left to their own devices, and if every seed germinated – orchids would take over the world in three generations!
Quite a large pile of orchid seed!
A big, big Thank-You to Lorna, and also to our other partners across the globe! We couldn’t do it without you!
By Luke Barnes | January 6, 2010
One of the fun things that we did at 3600m (11,800′) in the Himalayas was make snow angels! We thought that it would be particularly fun to try this now, seeing as we had loads of spare snow!
Snow Angels!
As you can see, they’ve turned out quite well! Who said school is no fun!? Especially in the snow!
By Luke Barnes | January 6, 2010
Yay! School is closed which means a day off, playing in the snow… or does it?
The greenhouse in snow.
Unlike students, plants don’t like having a ’snow day’ and as a result – plant people have to be in looking after them! This, of course, doesn’t mean that there’s no playing in the snow.
First we must check the greenhouse! This is particularly fun as it involves trudging 11.5cm (4.5″) of snow. The greenhouse it’self has escaped seriouse temperature drop as it has a thick blanket of snow covering it.
By Simon Pugh-Jones | January 3, 2010
Spring is the best time of year to repot and split orchids and at Writhlington spring starts early. One plant that needed drastic attention was this old plant of Odontoglossum cristatum. A lovely cool growing species from Colombia. It has been growing on the same piece of cork bark for about seven years and it is now in need of splitting up and repotting for a fresh start.
Read More…
By Simon Pugh-Jones | January 2, 2010
Fambong Lho
New year is a time we think about all the lovely people we work with around the world. So Happy New Year to our friends in Durban both at the Botanic Garden and at West Park School. Happy New Year as well to the pupils and staff at the Erica Primary School in Cape Town, to Souk and Eddie in Laos, to John, Ian and Judy in Belize, to Ana-Silvia and Federico in Guatemala, to Federico, Vannessa, Franco, Kerry and Bob in Costa Rica, to Izabel, David and Carlhinos in Brazil and all our friends in Sikkim, especially Mohan and Ganden who are second and fifth from the left in this lovely photo from our 2009 expedition to Sikkim. This is the log house at the Fambong Lho reserve in the mountains above Gangtok. Finally a Happy New year to all of you who read our blogs on the RHS. We hope to see you all sometime in 2010
