Molecular Ecology

Principal Investigator

Dormant Orchids Need Fungi to Rise Again

isotria_medeoloides_mkm2012.jpg
The small-whorled pogonia, Isotria medeoloides
(Melissa McCormick/SERC)

When life aboveground turns harsh, plants have few options. Some orchids respond by going dormant, spending years to decades underground before reemerging aboveground. But an army of the right fungi may help jolt them out of dormancy, ecologists from the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center discovered in a new study published in the American Journal of Botany Friday. 

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