A white bus with a floral mural on the side

BOTANY BUS: Students grow orchids in this mobile lab.

COURTESY OF THE MILLION ORCHID PROJECT STEM LAB/FAIRCHILD TROPICAL BOTANIC GARDEN

STANDARDS

NGSS: Core Idea: LS2.A

CCSS: Reading Informational Text: 1

TEKS: 6.12D, 7.10B, 8.11A, B.8C, B.12A

Flower Power on Wheels

Students across South Florida work to revive the state’s native orchids

AS YOU READ, THINK ABOUT what factors could cause certain plant species to disappear from the wild.

Enlargeable map of the world showing the location of the Everglades National Park

JIM MCMAHON/MAPMAN ®

Every Friday during her sophomore year, Alexa Martinez would leave BioTech High School in Miami, Florida, and hop on a bus parked outside. It wasn’t a typical yellow bus used to transport kids to and from school, though—it was a botany lab on wheels. The vehicle, called the STEMLab, was created as part of the Million Orchid Project to give students like Alexa the chance to study and protect local plants.

The project, launched by the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden, aims to plant 1 million orchids in urban areas across South Florida. The garden’s botanists hope the effort will save the state’s six native orchid species from extinction in the wild. BioTech is one of 100 local schools that have partnered with the botanical garden to help out. Students at member schools get to work in the STEMLab and learn all about how flowering plants reproduce and grow (see From Seed to Plant).

Protecting Native Plants
Watch a video about efforts to save orchids in Florida.

FADING FLOWERS

Orchids used to grow throughout the Florida Everglades. The swampy wetland contained oak and mahogany forests. They provided the perfect habitat for orchids, many of which grow only on trees. But in the late 1800s and early 1900s, people began taking orchids from the wetland to sell as houseplants. Some orchid collectors would even set fire to entire forests of trees to keep orchids rare and their prices high. “Orchids are one of the most exploited groups of organisms on the planet,” says Jason Downing, a botanist at Fairchild.

The construction of the Florida East Coast Railway in the late 1800s made it even easier to transfer millions of the plants to northern states, where owning one was a popular status symbol. The railway also brought more people to the area. It became urbanized, and the forests that orchids relied on were cleared to make way for farms and houses. Before this era, the Everglades covered the bottom two-thirds of Florida.Today, what remains of the now-protected wetland spans only the state’s southernmost tip. Habitat loss combined with the flower trade essentially wiped out South Florida’s orchid population.

A large group of kids and their teacher posing while holding 4 boxes of orchids

COURTESY OF THE MILLION ORCHID PROJECT STEM LAB/FAIRCHILD TROPICAL BOTANIC GARDEN

KIDS AT WORK: Student botanists with orchid seedlings

HELPING HAND

Without human help, South Florida’s orchids had no chance of bouncing back. Orchids grow extremely slowly. It can take up to four years for a seed to become an adult plant. On top of that, orchid seeds don’t contain stored nutrients to help them grow, like the seeds of other plants do. And as seedlings, orchids can’t perform photosynthesis to get nutrients, either. Most plants rely on this process, harnessing sunlight to convert carbon dioxide and water into oxygen and sugar that they use for energy.

Young orchids require help from a specific type of fungus that lives on their roots to obtain the food they need. A growing orchid absorbs carbon compounds produced by the fungus as its main food source. In return, the fungus may get some moisture from the orchid’s root system and organic matter that it can feed on. But for the most part, orchids seem to be parasites that take resources from the fungus, says Downing.

In nature, an orchid blossom produces millions of seeds as small as a speck of dust. They can grow only if they land on a patch of tree bark with the fungus on it. Unfortunately, the fungus is getting rarer in the wild. Downing estimates that only 10 percent of wild orchid seeds germinate, or sprout. But inside the STEMLab, says Downing, “We can directly provide the seeds with the nutrients they need.” That allows 100 percent of the team’s orchid seeds to germinate.

PLANT COMEBACK

Today, the Million Orchid Project has thousands of orchid seedlings. When the sprouts become big enough, they’re transferred to the wild. The trickiest part is finding a tree that harbors the fungus the plants rely on. The team looks for a healthy tree with a full canopy of leaves. Then they collect a sample of the tree’s bark and use a DNA test, which identifies an organism’s hereditary material, to confirm the presence of the fungus. “When we find it, it’s like a gold mine,” says Alexa.

A student looking at bark and plant samples at a lab bench

ANDREW KEARNS

SAVING ORCHIDS: A student examines seedlings and tree bark samples.

After locating a suitable tree, an orchid is affixed to its bark using a glue that won’t hurt either plant. “The roots will begin to attach over a period of months or years,” says Downing. Most species can also be planted in the ground after they fully mature and can start photosynthesis. These are often planted in school or butterfly gardens.

So far, the Million Orchid Project, which started in 2013, has planted about 165,000 flowers in and around Miami. But for Downing, this is only the beginning. The project’s goal isn’t just to plant a million orchids, but also to create a new population of wild plants that will grow on its own over time. “The hope is that these plants will mature, produce flowers, spread seeds, and start to pop up on their own,” says Downing. 

CONSTRUCTING EXPLANATIONS: Why is it hard for Florida’s orchids to rebound on their own in the wild? Cite text evidence to support your answer.

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