{"id":6989,"date":"2011-02-17T16:38:50","date_gmt":"2011-02-18T00:38:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/?p=6989"},"modified":"2011-08-10T08:21:24","modified_gmt":"2011-08-10T16:21:24","slug":"underground-orchid-reveals-plant-evolution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/2011\/02\/17\/underground-orchid-reveals-plant-evolution\/","title":{"rendered":"Underground Orchid Reveals Plant Evolution"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Australian scientists recently celebrated <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/2010\/11\/05\/rare-australian-orchid-relocated\/\">the successful cultivation of the bizarre Eastern Underground Orchid<\/a>. Now, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.australiangeographic.com.au\/journal\/underground-orchid-give-plants-evolution-clues.htm\" target=\"_blank\">they&#8217;re learning about plant genetics from its close cousin, the Western Underground Orchid<\/a>. This weird plant is also <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Rhizanthella_gardneri\" target=\"_blank\">a Rhizanthella species<\/a>, and lives below ground, except when its flowers peek through the soil. Without green leaves for photosynthesis, it survives by feeding off a fungus. It has fewer <a href=\"http:\/\/hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu\/hbase\/biology\/chloroplast.html\" target=\"_blank\">chloroplast<\/a> genes than any other plant. The shrunken genetic code will help scientists better understand chloroplasts, and how plants lose genes that they no longer need. Those are big contributions to science from such a strange, small orchid.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Australian scientists recently celebrated the successful cultivation of the bizarre Eastern Underground Orchid. Now, they&#8217;re learning about plant genetics from its close cousin, the Western Underground Orchid. This weird plant is also a Rhizanthella species, and lives below ground, except when its flowers peek through the soil. Without green leaves for photosynthesis, it survives by [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6989","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-in-the-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6989","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6989"}],"version-history":[{"count":36,"href":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6989\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7036,"href":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6989\/revisions\/7036"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}