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Native Canadian orchid species in Canada

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Kevin

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Location
Winnipeg, Canada
Does anyone have sources for Native Canadian orchid species in Canada? They must be selling only seed-raised plants, as opposed to the many garden centres that sell showys and yellows. Still trying to find where they get their plants. Most likely dup up.:mad:

The only one I know of if Fraser's Thimble Farms in B.C. Good place, but expensive, and shipping is expensive too. Garden Slippers I don't think has any native species. Is anyone doing flasking in Canada in Cyps or any other genera, like Calopogon, Pogonia, Platanthera, etc.? I know these genera are readily available in the U.S., but most don't export, and besides, the paperwork is a pain anyway.
 
Shawn does have the little yellow slippers, I never know if they're parviflorum or pubescens, or whatever. He also might know who had other genera; it seems to me his plan is to eventually carry some as well because we've talked about it for sure.

Just email him with your questions, he's a really good guy.

[email protected]
 
Shawn does have the little yellow slippers, I never know if they're parviflorum or pubescens, or whatever. He also might know who had other genera; it seems to me his plan is to eventually carry some as well because we've talked about it for sure.

Just email him with your questions, he's a really good guy.

[email protected]

Yes, I know Shawn, but haven't talked to him recently. He does not have any native species on his site for spring 2012. From what I've heard from him, he imports all his stuff from Europe.
 
Planteck used to sell some interesting species. They aren't listing any now, but you could contact them.

Except for Cyps, nobody seems to mess with micropropagation of terrestrial orchids. Occasionally you see Platenthera, Goodyera, Habenaria, etc. that have been flask grown, but the rest for sale are all wild sourced. The same situation exists worldwide.
 
Yes, I know about Planteck. They used to have a wide variety of native and other hardy orchids for retail, grown from flask, but no more.

KyushuCalanthe;362105Except for Cyps said:
Are you saying that some do 'mess' with micropropagation of Cyps?? So, it is possible to clone Cyps? Why do companies bother with seed growing, then? You'd think that cloning would yield a much higher number of 'seedlings' than with growing from seed, for a much cheaper price.

From what I've found out so far from the garden centres here, is that they don't buy direct from the 'producer' - they go through a wholesaler or a broker. Makes it harder to track down where the plants came from originally.
 
Hey Kevin, bottom line is there is little money in selling most terrestrial orchids with the exception a few. Of the Canadian species, only the more showy Cyps, perhaps a couple Platenthera, Calopogon tuberosus, and Goodyera are marketable. All the rest are either too difficult to maintain or are frankly not pretty enough for the horticultural trade.

In Japan there is a modest interest in many native terrestrials though most are not very showy. When you see them for sale they are all most certainly wild collected. Exceptions would be Calanthe, Cypripedium (except C. debile and C. japonicum which are wild sourced), Ponerorchis graminifolia, Habenaria radiata, Amitostigma keiseki, and a few others, all of which are grown from seed.

Sorry about the misuse of the word micropropagation - a term interchangeable with tissue culture. To my knowledge, Cyps are not being produced this way in any sizable number. A few abstracts from the net:

C. formosanum

C. flavum

C. macranthos v. rebunense

In the above articles both axillary buds (C. formosanum only) and mature seed were used. These were treated with cytokinins to produce protocorm-like bodies that could be separated into multiple shoots. I've heard of success using root tips in C. reginae as well. The funny part is you never hear what happened to the adult plants, assuming any have been produced yet.

Of course tissue culture would be great in theory, especially considering hybrid plants have such varied outcomes - superior individuals definitely exist. The issue is making these techniques commercially viable. Currently, all the Cyps you see on the market today are either seed grown, wild sourced, or divisions of cultivated plants.
 
For sure there are now 2 companys in Europ who are making clones of cyps.

The ones we are thinking they uses seedlings and break them down in a row, they manage to get them flowering in less then 4 years.

the german one says we can clone plants, and they have now the first Ulla in offering, so we heard they are succesfull with others too.

They will show up in future.

We heard they are working on Phrag now too, hopefully obn Kovachii.....

By the way, I showed cloned seedliongs in one of my posts, and received calceolus now too.

they are tribbel the size as normal seedlings.
 
Good info. For this thread, I'm looking for nurseries in Canada that sell Canadian naive species. It appears that there is only one that I knew of already - FTF. I'll contact Shawn and see what he can tell me. Planteck is wholesale for reginae, so if someone would order from them, depending on the price, it would be a way to get good seedlings. Too bad the Canadian orchid community is not getting into native and/or hardy orchids.
 
Hey Kevin, bottom line is there is little money in selling most terrestrial orchids with the exception a few. Of the Canadian species, only the more showy Cyps, perhaps a couple Platenthera, Calopogon tuberosus, and Goodyera are marketable. All the rest are either too difficult to maintain or are frankly not pretty enough for the horticultural trade.

In Japan there is a modest interest in many native terrestrials though most are not very showy. When you see them for sale they are all most certainly wild collected. Exceptions would be Calanthe, Cypripedium (except C. debile and C. japonicum which are wild sourced), Ponerorchis graminifolia, Habenaria radiata, Amitostigma keiseki, and a few others, all of which are grown from seed.

Sorry about the misuse of the word micropropagation - a term interchangeable with tissue culture. To my knowledge, Cyps are not being produced this way in any sizable number. A few abstracts from the net:

C. formosanum

C. flavum

C. macranthos v. rebunense

In the above articles both axillary buds (C. formosanum only) and mature seed were used. These were treated with cytokinins to produce protocorm-like bodies that could be separated into multiple shoots. I've heard of success using root tips in C. reginae as well. The funny part is you never hear what happened to the adult plants, assuming any have been produced yet.

Of course tissue culture would be great in theory, especially considering hybrid plants have such varied outcomes - superior individuals definitely exist. The issue is making these techniques commercially viable. Currently, all the Cyps you see on the market today are either seed grown, wild sourced, or divisions of cultivated plants.

The species I have seen in the past for sale (some of which I have tried, and killed:() are: Cyp. reginae, the large and small yellows, Pogonia ophioglossoides, Calopogon tuberosus, and Platanthera dilitata. Most are not available anymore. I know that most of the others are not what most would want, and I'm not talking about those.

One local nursery that I am in contact with, used that article about Cyp. formosanum to validitate his claim that Cyps. can be tissue cultured, when talking about our native species here.

I think the argument can be made that, if the Cyps being sold are wild-dug, then their costs are very low, and they can make a huge profit by selling them. If they would go into seed-grown plants, their costs would be much more, and they would have to raise the retail price. Also, it seems most customers and business owners don't really care where the plants come from. A very sad reality.
 
Hey Kevin, well there is hope - Dido's information of micropropagation is heartening and hopefully will lead to more suitable Cyps for the average garden. Growing seed produced plants is actually quite straight forward with quite a few terrestrial species - some of the Cyps, Dactys, Calopogon, Goodyera, Calathe, for example. The hard/costly part is growing them to adult sized plants - great for a hobbyist, but perhaps not so good as a business model.

So, for now, most terrestrial species on the market are from wild sources. Even a species like Goodyera pubescens which is easy to flask, why would you bother when untold thousands can be collected and sold on demand? That is the same problem with the Chinese Cyps. No body is going to get serious about propagating them until wild populations drop below commercially harvestable levels - and that will take a long time for many of the common species such as C. tibeticum and C. flavum.

The more rare types, like C. wardii and C. farreri will simply cease to exist in most of their range. That situation has already happened with Taiwan's endemic, C. segawai - it is essentially stripped from the wild and remains uncommon in the trade as well. With luck there is an unknown population "out there somewhere", but how long before that one is found...

Luckily, Canadian species are much less under the gun, mostly due to the cold climate I'd guess. Your country still harbors huge populations of C. arietinum, C. montanum, C. passerinum, Calypso bulbosa, Goodyera oblongifolia, and Arethusa bulbsoa - all of which are becoming increasingly rare in lower 48 states. May they enjoy a stable future...yet the deforestation of vast areas in the western mountains and the strip mining of Manitoba's tar sands put many plants at risk as well.
 
I thought there was a nursery in Quebec selling them at one time, I know my friend Peter here in Ont had lots but got out of it.
 
Hey Kevin, well there is hope - Dido's information of micropropagation is heartening and hopefully will lead to more suitable Cyps for the average garden. Growing seed produced plants is actually quite straight forward with quite a few terrestrial species - some of the Cyps, Dactys, Calopogon, Goodyera, Calathe, for example. The hard/costly part is growing them to adult sized plants - great for a hobbyist, but perhaps not so good as a business model.

So, for now, most terrestrial species on the market are from wild sources. Even a species like Goodyera pubescens which is easy to flask, why would you bother when untold thousands can be collected and sold on demand? That is the same problem with the Chinese Cyps. No body is going to get serious about propagating them until wild populations drop below commercially harvestable levels - and that will take a long time for many of the common species such as C. tibeticum and C. flavum.

The more rare types, like C. wardii and C. farreri will simply cease to exist in most of their range. That situation has already happened with Taiwan's endemic, C. segawai - it is essentially stripped from the wild and remains uncommon in the trade as well. With luck there is an unknown population "out there somewhere", but how long before that one is found...

Luckily, Canadian species are much less under the gun, mostly due to the cold climate I'd guess. Your country still harbors huge populations of C. arietinum, C. montanum, C. passerinum, Calypso bulbosa, Goodyera oblongifolia, and Arethusa bulbsoa - all of which are becoming increasingly rare in lower 48 states. May they enjoy a stable future...yet the deforestation of vast areas in the western mountains and the strip mining of Manitoba's tar sands put many plants at risk as well.

Good points. I do hope that the native orchids gain more popularity, and there is interest in saving them, but that doesn't seem to be the case. I'm not sure if it is like this in other parts of the world, but here, the 'orchid societies' arae really only into the tropical types, and don't have much interest in the native orchids right on our doorstep. Society members even are part of the ones who dig them up!!

Yes, unfortunately we as humans tend not to see what we have until it is gone. Our tall grass prairie is down to less than 1% of what it was, and so there are companies selling seed of the plants that are remaining for those that care. For those that don't care, they dig plants up.

In your last statement, why do you say the cold weather would save our plants? What is saving them is the vast undeveloped lands of the boreal forest, the mountains, the tundra and elsewhere, where people just don't go. In the developed southern part of the country, habitat loss and digging of plants has pretty well wiped out many populations, which is why Cyp. candidum is on the endangered species list. When you said we harbour 'huge populations' of certain species, this might only be true in the north, as they are deffinitely not common in developed areas. You did forget to mention Cyp. parv. var. makasin and Cyp. parv. var. pubescens - in Manitoba we have untold thousands of them! I am not aware that Cyp. montanum occurs in 'huge populations'. I have seen one population, but I don't think it is that common.

As for your last sentence, I think you meant Alberta - we don't have tar sands in Manitoba.
 
yellow ladyslippers do exist in vast numbers in eastern canada, though i personally haven't been up to see them yet. fields and fields, miles and miles of yellows. my step-brother says they are on some of the property that his power plant is on
 
yellow ladyslippers do exist in vast numbers in eastern canada, though i personally haven't been up to see them yet. fields and fields, miles and miles of yellows. my step-brother says they are on some of the property that his power plant is on
they are in full bloom right now
 
Hey Kevin, some responses:

In your last statement, why do you say the cold weather would save our plants? What is saving them is the vast undeveloped lands of the boreal forest, the mountains, the tundra and elsewhere, where people just don't go.

That was my point, folks just don't want to live there, so things are more or less left alone (until there is a reason to develop those areas - e.g. the tar sands area).

In the developed southern part of the country, habitat loss and digging of plants has pretty well wiped out many populations, which is why Cyp. candidum is on the endangered species list. When you said we harbour 'huge populations' of certain species, this might only be true in the north, as they are deffinitely not common in developed areas.

I'm sure the situation is much more like the states in those areas. Again, I was focusing on the plants in northern/high mountain areas having intact habitat in comparison with their ranges south of the border.

You did forget to mention Cyp. parv. var. makasin and Cyp. parv. var. pubescens - in Manitoba we have untold thousands of them! I am not aware that Cyp. montanum occurs in 'huge populations'. I have seen one population, but I don't think it is that common.

I was focusing on the more rare and/or boreal species that are relatively common in parts of Canada in comparison with the USA. C. parviflorum is on the whole the most common and widely distributed of all the Cyps in the western hemisphere. I have wanted to see those fields of them in person! I have a friend in BC who says that he has seen "huge" populations of C. montanum there. I guess everything is relative.

As for your last sentence, I think you meant Alberta - we don't have tar sands in Manitoba.

You're right, wrong province, but the idea I stick by. Such operations are a menace to this world regardless of what folks say. We are running out of planet to dig up. Places like the tar sands are prime examples of true exploitation that is just unthinkable - the utter destruction of an ecosystem. I saw a similar type of mining in Florida - the digging for phosphate deposits. Nuts.

So, in the end it is mostly about habitat loss - either through ever expanding direct human disturbance or modification of habitat through climatic changes, management practices, or the like. Taken as an alien looking in, I'd guess that it might seem that humans are at war with the biota of this world - and with themselves :(
 

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