Can a chopped orchid regrow?

[Paul O]

Last year a Southern Marsh orchid flowered in our meadow by the brook - the first orchid there for many decades, probably the first ever. We watched it mature and produce seed, some of which we sowed in a prepared patch nearby. This year we were delighted to see it again, together with another, and have been going every day to check the progress as the flower buds start to open. Today they are both gone - I can see just the remains of one stem. I guess this is due to a Roe deer and am wishing I'd placed a large cage over them! My question is "Is there a chance of the plant regrowing from the stalk?" I am doubtful because I guess the plant would be at its weakest during the flowering stage, but I know little about the details of how orchids grow.

Any advice would be very welcome!

[Steve Pollard]

Sorry about your orchid, Paul! They are the lollipops of a meadow. Yes, deer love them. Cows do too - one year mine broke in, and in a short time seemed to have run around and eaten the majority of the orchids. I was very cross! And, yes, if you have just a few of them, it's easy to protect them while they're in flower with a bit of wire. Luckily, orchids are perennials. The deer will have only eaten the flowers and not the leaves - which are in a basal rosette. So while they will not flower again this year, the plants will form new tubers, as usual, and grow again next year. Orchids take several years to flower from seed, so the fact that you have two orchids means that either you have a local seed source, or that you have had a plant seed previously - the second plant this year won't be as a result of the plant seeding last year. It's a set back, and a long process, but given the right conditions, orchids can grow readily and in abundance. I hope you still have other flowers to enjoy!

[Paul O]

Thanks Steve. I guess deer and cows must be able to smell the orchids. Maybe there's a catnip-equivalent for deer that we could plant somewhere well away from the orchids! For next year we have this option:-

These orchids probably came from seed we had from Goren Farm's meadows a few years ago. Deer are quite a problem here. Last year was the worst ever for ticks, with my wife picking several off the dog each time after it went outside. This year the tick season started early but numbers have dropped-off now; maybe it was too wet even for ticks. What we need is a system for turning deer into dog-venison!

[Jane W]

Very sorry to hear about deer eating these orchids Paul. But the very fact that these lovely orchids have appeared on your watch, is something to be proud of. I had no idea that orchids were so tasty to deer, cows etc so that’s interesting to learn. We have Spotted heath orchids here and they survive and spread well, getting accidentally cut or trodden on while in bud (which many inevitably do, despite my best efforts) doesn’t seem to diminish their numbers. So far the thing that I suspect kills them is being overgrown by too thick vegetation that they can’t compete with.
I had one single yellow rattle plant a few years ago...i studiously kept an eye on it, to collect seed from it when it was ready. A few days later I saw a deer very close to the house and when I went outside I saw that it had picked its way through all sorts of yummy things to eat my yellow rattle to the ground. Very contrary. Why wont they eat brambles and bracken instead!
Your cage will probably work well for next year.
If memory serves me correctly, deer can increase their population by 30% a year ( wild boar by 50%). It’s a lot, and maybe supports an argument for reintroduction of larger predators, or even well controlled and humane ( if that’s not a contradiction in terms!) hunting.

[Paul O]

Thanks Jane - we were very proud of our orchids and have got our comeuppance now. This afternoon I sat in a sheltered spot and started reading this week's New Scientist magazine to forget about my disappointment, only to see an article entitled "Orchids feed their young through underground fungal networks"! It describes research done by Katie Field and her team at Sheffield University. They have found a way to cultivate Common Spotted Orchids in the lab, and introduced a fungal network into the growing medium that connected adults and seedlings. Using radiolabelled carbon dioxide they then demonstrated that sugars were acquired by the seedlings from the adult plants, thus confirming the wood wide web principle for orchids. Now I feel even sadder about my plants!

[Jane W]

Yes I have heard the same thing about fungal networks and orchids from a friend who is a botanist. She is kind enough to help me identify flowers when I'm completely lost.. the last time it was a strange orchid type plant called a Twayblade. It flowered one year, and I search for it every year now, and have never seen it since..(.that’s probably not what you want to hear though when you're worried about the survival of the Marsh orchids!) But sometimes its just not our fault if plants get killed off.
But, as Steve said, the loss of the flower bud shouldn't cause any damage at all to the main body of the orchid...in fact I wonder if the energy that it can save from not having to produce seed, may be used to strengthen the parent plant, or even send out more nutrients to any small offsprings that it may be connected to via these fungal networks.
It would be interesting to see whether there are more next year.