Wild Orchids - Roots and Nutrition
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Rick
Well-Known Member
Is it really that simple? I'd put money on leaf tissue data from wild Phalaenopsis plants would show a different balance of K and Ca, with a completely different immune response to disease organisms.
Extra K causes increase in carbohydrate/sugar production, and decrease in cell wall integrity. Sweet/soft plants are more attractive to predators (bacteria, fungal, insect ...) than bitter and tough plants regardless of standing water in the crown.
No, I'm not saying it is that simple and the extra K factor is a big factor.
What I was comparing is one factor. Dry crown vs wet crown, dry no rot wet rot in artificial conditions. Even with low K in the wild some plants design themselves to keep water out of their tender spots.
Perhaps by keeping the K levels low as in nature there will be more tolerance for errors in other parts of the environment.
What I was trying to point out is that there are a lot of simple factors of how orchids grow in Nature that are overlooked.
A quick test would be with Phalenopsis plants side by side.
Planted in pots with crowns up.
One half gets MSU the other K-lite.
Water during the day as is most peoples practice and keep crowns dry at night
After 4 months water them at night keeping the crowns wet.
It has been pretty standard for Phals to develop crown rot quickly.
If the K-lite plants don't rot and the MSU plants rot then the point is proven.
Rick
Well-Known Member
This is going on informally as we speak. Although I tend to grow most of my phals mounted (with "natural" crown orientation) most of the members in my society still grow in pots. Even with watering during the day they still experienced crown rot, but over the last year they are claiming that the incidence of both rots and mealies is greatly reduced. Unfortunately not side by side, and completely anecdotal.
I have a handful of phales in baskets sitting horizontally. In my GH the fogger comes on both at night or day (to maintain humidity), and during the winter it is frequently on at night. But these horizontal phales doen't get crown rot either. My last phal that rotted was a brand new acquisition, fed a standard high K diet, that rotted 2 weeks after I got it.
Rick
Well-Known Member
Awfully healthy looking phrags for living out in the jungle
oke:oke:Lance get your conductivity meter out there and get some numbers!!!
Rick
Well-Known Member
Quote from Tom. Given the complexity of relationships between organisms in the wild (fungi weighing in heavily), I don't think it is possible to generalize too much about how or why a particular plant grows where it does.
Quote from Lance. I agree completely. We especially have the problem of working with so many different species from different environments.
But isn't it amazing at the other end of the spectra that we can grow hundreds to thousands of species in a single gh with 99% overlap of physical/chemical conditions.:wink: A Philippine Phaleanopsis growing within a foot of an Ecuadorian Phrag, about 1 ft away from a Vietnamese Paph all getting the same water and chemistry regime!! Something pretty fundamental going on here, that I think we are over-thinking.
Quote from Lance. I agree completely. We especially have the problem of working with so many different species from different environments.
But isn't it amazing at the other end of the spectra that we can grow hundreds to thousands of species in a single gh with 99% overlap of physical/chemical conditions.:wink: A Philippine Phaleanopsis growing within a foot of an Ecuadorian Phrag, about 1 ft away from a Vietnamese Paph all getting the same water and chemistry regime!! Something pretty fundamental going on here, that I think we are over-thinking.
The informal observations of assorted growers has me convinced that the low k fertilizer is a huge advancement in our knowledge. I said in the very beginning that these informal tests carry more credence than does a controlled commercial trial. I still feel that way and only suggest the simple trial to have the side by side for the rot issue not the nutrient factor.
Great video! I had not seen it before. About the cleanest wild orchid I have ever seen. What the guy is saying and showing with besseae is basically what I'm seeing with most orchids, but I'm looking at many different species and many different environments.
Awfully healthy looking phrags for living out in the jungle
maybe this is a re-planted location? The flower quality looks like well bred plants. Regardless they are growing wild.
Next week I will be in the mountains and take readings from dense orchid plots.
Yes something very fundamental is missing and that is basically what I'm looking for. I actually think your low "k" hit it on the nail as far as the imbalance or even excess of K. But why do the plants continue to grow so well with such lower amounts of nutrients than we thought was needed? I'm looking for any justification in Nature to apply the amount of fertilizer that has been common for the last 50 years. I'm not finding anything to back it up.
Although I have not yet tested EC of the orchid media moisture in the past while collecting kilifish I tested a lot of small streams that carry the runoff, most were about 25 ppm. Now the rains are less and I can look for higher numbers that reflect soil water as opposed to rainfall.
OK did a quick experiment.
Shaved a handful of lichen bearing bark off a tree.
Tree does not have epiphytes or moss (it is a young tree in secondary forest)
Put 1/2" filtered well water in a cup. Water is 12ppm pH6.7
Put bark into water. (about 3x more water than bark volume)
Wait 10 minutes.
Now the water reads 188ppm pH5.3
This indicates that something in or on the bark dissolves into water very quickly.
I have no idea what chemicals are involved but it does indicate that when bark is wet by dew it may release nutrients into the moisture accessible to orchid roots. Also don't know if the dissolved substance is from the bark or lichen or if the substance has any nutritional value for orchids.
Shaved a handful of lichen bearing bark off a tree.
Tree does not have epiphytes or moss (it is a young tree in secondary forest)
Put 1/2" filtered well water in a cup. Water is 12ppm pH6.7
Put bark into water. (about 3x more water than bark volume)
Wait 10 minutes.
Now the water reads 188ppm pH5.3
This indicates that something in or on the bark dissolves into water very quickly.
I have no idea what chemicals are involved but it does indicate that when bark is wet by dew it may release nutrients into the moisture accessible to orchid roots. Also don't know if the dissolved substance is from the bark or lichen or if the substance has any nutritional value for orchids.
Rick
Well-Known Member
Cool! That was fun. Might also be the surface dust accumulation if it hasn't rained in a bit.
Might also try a rinsed off handful prior to the soaking.
Most likely a lot of different things. Given the pH drop probably lots of organic acids. But it wouldn't make good tea if you couldn't leach something out of it.
Can your meter give results in uS/cm instead of ppm?
I ways back I posted a link to a paper on nutrients draining out of birdnest ferns in Sabah. They did pour through tests on big in situ ferns and got peak conductivity of around 80 uS/cm ( if salts that comes out to about 40ppm). I contacted them via email, and they also said that birdnest ferns were generally infested with ants as well as being big leaf litter traps. They also measured N and K and only got 5-8 ppm of either by either the artificial pour through, or collection cups of natural rainfall events.
Might also try a rinsed off handful prior to the soaking.
Most likely a lot of different things. Given the pH drop probably lots of organic acids. But it wouldn't make good tea if you couldn't leach something out of it.
Can your meter give results in uS/cm instead of ppm?
I ways back I posted a link to a paper on nutrients draining out of birdnest ferns in Sabah. They did pour through tests on big in situ ferns and got peak conductivity of around 80 uS/cm ( if salts that comes out to about 40ppm). I contacted them via email, and they also said that birdnest ferns were generally infested with ants as well as being big leaf litter traps. They also measured N and K and only got 5-8 ppm of either by either the artificial pour through, or collection cups of natural rainfall events.
Rick
Well-Known Member
I just did something fun too.
I took 150 mls of room temp RO water (conductivity = 0) and stuck a single teabag of Bigalow green tea (with pomegranit) into it. Conductivity is >500 uS/cm and climbing in less than 5minutes. That should register about 250ppm on most meter algorithms.
I know from drinking green tea its neither salty nor full of nitrates or ammonia. Most likely all tanic acids and sugars.
Of the dry mass of plant material, the bulk of it is carbon based compounds.
I took 150 mls of room temp RO water (conductivity = 0) and stuck a single teabag of Bigalow green tea (with pomegranit) into it. Conductivity is >500 uS/cm and climbing in less than 5minutes. That should register about 250ppm on most meter algorithms.
I know from drinking green tea its neither salty nor full of nitrates or ammonia. Most likely all tanic acids and sugars.
Of the dry mass of plant material, the bulk of it is carbon based compounds.
Rick
Well-Known Member
I just stuck 1/4tsp of white table vinegar (acetic acid) into 200ml of RO water and got a conductivity of 100uS/cm.
I could barely taste the sourness (less than the tea).
Most likely your bark decoction is mostly organic acids.
http://andrewsforest.oregonstate.edu/pubs/pdf/pub1957.pdf This is old and for temperate lichens, but does address leachates from lichens
I could barely taste the sourness (less than the tea).
Most likely your bark decoction is mostly organic acids.
http://andrewsforest.oregonstate.edu/pubs/pdf/pub1957.pdf This is old and for temperate lichens, but does address leachates from lichens
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I think tea leaves have a high potassium content. Not just tanic acids.
Looking for possible mineral content of tropical tree leaves I found some info. No info on content of bark but it might be similar to leaf content.
mango trees often have orchids growing in them and the mango leaves contain the following:
N (%)1.20
P (%)0.10
K (%)0.50
Ca (%)3.04
Mg (%)0.47
S(%)0.17
The NPK ratio would be 12-1-5
The CaMgS would be 30-5-2
Here are a couple documents that have some interesting data on mineral content of tropical forest trees
tropical trees leaf analysis
http://www.agnet.org/htmlarea_file/library/20110804160807/eb398.pdf
leaf analysis Hawaiian crops
http://www.ctahr.hawaii.edu/oc/freepubs/pdf/pnm4.pdf
More wild plant pictures coming tomorrow!
mango trees often have orchids growing in them and the mango leaves contain the following:
N (%)1.20
P (%)0.10
K (%)0.50
Ca (%)3.04
Mg (%)0.47
S(%)0.17
The NPK ratio would be 12-1-5
The CaMgS would be 30-5-2
Here are a couple documents that have some interesting data on mineral content of tropical forest trees
tropical trees leaf analysis
http://www.agnet.org/htmlarea_file/library/20110804160807/eb398.pdf
leaf analysis Hawaiian crops
http://www.ctahr.hawaii.edu/oc/freepubs/pdf/pnm4.pdf
More wild plant pictures coming tomorrow!
Somebody read this and see if it has any good info...
http://phylodiversity.net/bb08/students/wan/Projects/p3_anna+greg+wan.pdf
http://phylodiversity.net/bb08/students/wan/Projects/p3_anna+greg+wan.pdf
This one gives mineral content of tropical tree bark...
http://books.google.com.pe/books?id...q=mineral analysis tropical tree bark&f=false
http://books.google.com.pe/books?id...q=mineral analysis tropical tree bark&f=false
Rick
Well-Known Member
Then it would taste salty and not sour, but you just can't do it by the math either.
The inorganic constituents of plants (that's all the NPKCaMg...) only account for about 1% of the dry material the rest is carbon based molecules. The tea bag probably holds less than a gram (1000mg) of material. So if the tea leaves totally dissolved I would only get 1% (10mg) total inorganics back, of which less than half of that could be K (5mg)
On the other hand with total dissolution there would be 990 mg of carbon based chemicals to pick from.
Here are some plants that are growing on one specific tree species along this creek. No other trees at this location have orchids growing on them but they do have other epiphytes. No one knows what species the tree is.
Close up here shows how roots sit on limb. Not much chance here to trap dead leaves.
Pepperomias and othe epiphytes grow in crotches but here not orchids.
Bromeliad grows on trunk of tree. Note the lichen patch above in the water flow path.
Close up here shows how roots sit on limb. Not much chance here to trap dead leaves.
Pepperomias and othe epiphytes grow in crotches but here not orchids.
Bromeliad grows on trunk of tree. Note the lichen patch above in the water flow path.
