Roth, I understand that this is probably not a book for people who is just interested in cultivation. It is great for people interested in the science side of orchid biology, though.
Compared with other plant species, reproductive biology of orchids aren't well studied. So this is a valuable contribution. To me, objective science tells more about the biology of the orchids than a bunch of photos. I do like to see photos of natural habitat, but most scientific papers usually don't rely on photos to tell the story. There are lots of literatures about evolution of mating-system and life-history strategy, and compared with these other studies, I desire a little more thorough treatment (e.g., using markers to estimate the selfing-rates, number of sires per flower, population structure etc.). Also, estimates of inbreeding depression is only limited to seed germination rates, which is understandable because it would be difficult to measure the seedling survival rates in the nature.
That's where the major mess starts. It is exceedingly hard to believe that the authors did not take many photos of the armeniacum in the wild over the course of their study, and as you point out there are not so many published indeed, even in specialized 'ecology' books.
The reason is bleak, the whole book, to my mind, has been written in front of a computer, and period. There is nothing behind, no study, nothing, NOTHING, just like a fiction novel.
I happen to know many collectors, and one of the reasons why the massive poaching is never publicly mentioned, for many orchids... Because the collectors SAVE the botanist and scientists, they take photos in the wild, where the botanist can enjoy nice girls (or boys, for those inclined in...), good food, good wine, and just wait some habitat photos ( and we hope that he did not order from a trader, who would go to the Ba Vi Ho Chi Minh house, and take the photos by plugging a couple of plants there for a couple minutes... like it happened twice..., but more like the Paphiopedilum tigrinum 'in situ' photos, taken by a local collector in Burma, whose a couple of the whole set have been published in a well known, and famous, Paphiopedilum book, as being by the author, and in China...).
I will tell a story ( that I told in Perth...). I helped an Asian University, as they wanted to publish research on Paphiopedilum seed sowing in vitro. They had a sponsorship from a private institution (nothing orchid related by that way...) to complete that research on the Paphiopedilum. They asked me how I do, they asked me seeds ( as they just had a few fresh wild collected plants, not blooming, at the start of their study). To publish, with regressive analysis, statistics on the best media, quantity of seedlings, timing, etc... it took them FOUR MONTHS FROM THE TIME I GAVE THEM THE SEEDS TO MAKE A COMPLETE PAPER ON GERMINATION AND DEFLASKING, justify the money from the sponsorship and ask for more money, on another project. Of course the publication is without a single photo... except a wild paph in bloom at the beginning, in a pot, and in one version (that they had to remove online...) a single flask of germinating protocorm of obviously either dendrobium, bulbophyllum or coelogyne...
That's why when you say it is useful, I say it is useless, because we do not know if it fantasy or not. The photos of armeniacum with the stolons, or the armeniacum with side shoot are typical of batches purchased from the collectors, or local nurseries, not collected by researchers of any kind, believe me... From that, one can think that the whole book is just a fantasy, but nothing scientific.
The reason why most scientific papers do not rely on photos is simply because the research has not been done, I have several other examples first hand...
If you look at some of the parts, how can they figure out that the flowers tend to self ??? Only a DNA analysis could eventually prove so, as for me I have never seen it, and could not figure out how the pollen could touch the stigma when the flower ages... Or the masses of seedlings observed during the study. I have been to Baoshan, where there is a colony of armeniacum by the roadside. I did not see many seedlings if any at all, the smaller plants were restarts from the nodes of the main stolons ( eventually some plants never bloom, that's true too...). The fruit set rate is in the few per thousands, this I know it first hand, because the collectors do not remove the seed capsules if the flower spike is fresh, and in july/august, when they collect a few dozen thousands plants, only a few have a flower spike alive and/or a seed capsule... Where and how they germinated the seeds to assess the depressive effect of inbreeding is not mentioned anywhere, this would have been interesting. If they had a poor media to germinate those, the results are useless, but we cannot know...
As an aside, figures 4.1 and 4.2 do not look really to be taken in the wild, to be kind...
