Western Australia's Incredible Underground Orchid

[n2doc]

ScienceDaily (Feb. 9, 2011) — Rhizanthella gardneri is a cute, quirky and critically endangered orchid that lives all its life underground. It even blooms underground, making it virtually unique amongst plants.

Last year, using radioactive tracers, scientists at The University of Western Australia showed that the orchid gets all its nutrients by parasitising fungi associated with the roots of broom bush, a woody shrub of the WA outback.
Now, with less than 50 individuals left in the wild, scientists have made a timely and remarkable discovery about its genome.
Despite the fact that this fully subterranean orchid cannot photosynthesise and has no green parts at all, it still retains chloroplasts -- the site of photosynthesis in plants.

"We found that compared with normal plants, 70 per cent of the genes in the chloroplast have been lost," said Dr Etienne Delannoy, of the ARC Centre for Excellence in Plant Energy Biology, the lead researcher of a study published in Molecular Biology and Evolution. "With only 37 genes, this makes it the smallest of all known plant chloroplast genomes."

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http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/02/110208101337.htm

[Ian David]

1. I welcome our new subterranean orchid overlords. n/t

[xchrom]

2. Wow - lovely and wild. Nt

[immoderate]

3. For the pleasure of underground fairies.

--imm