Weird and Wonderful Native Orchids with Melissa McCormick [via Zoom]
Date/Time
Thursday, March 13, 2025
7:00 pm - 8:30 pm
Categories
Melissa McCormick will present “Weird and Wonderful Native Orchids” focusing orchids that are native to the mid-Atlantic.
North America is home to over 200 of the 28,000 worldwide orchid species. And a good variety of native orchids are found in Virginia, including Showy Lady’s Slippers (Cyripedium reginae), Coralroots (Corallorhiza), and the rare Virginia Sneezeweed (Helenium virginicum), found only in Virginia and Missouri.
Lady’s Slipper Orchid (Cyripedium reginae) photo by Sieg Kopinitz
Melissa McCormick is Director of the Smithsonian’s North American Orchid Conservation Center. She has ongoing projects on orchid ecology and conservation, mycorrhizal interactions, plant invasion ecology, and plant responses to anthropogenic changes. She says:
My ongoing projects spread across three focal areas. I am using population genetics to trace the spread of invasive Phragmites australis and to understand the impacts of eutrophication on Spartina alterniflora. In these projects we (my collaborators and I) are using patterns of genetic variation to understand the processes that drive species responses. I also have ongoing projects on orchid ecology in which I am examining the effects of environmental conditions, natural hybridization, and the abundance and distribution of mycorrhizal fungi as drivers of orchid flowering and distribution. A third focal area for my research is trying to understand how genes that are expressed and bacteria that live within the hyphae of orchid mycorrhizal fungi affect fungal ability to form mycorrhizae.