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AS I was looking at the files this week, I realized it’s been a very long time since we looked at what’s probably the most important one in the cabinet. It certainly isn’t bulging but it IS important because trust me, if it weren’t for the plants, you and I would NOT be here because plants are the ultimate source of every bit of nourishment you take in.

Plants, like bacteria (the real dominant life form on old planet Earth) get no respect, but there are some really cool stories about our less mobile kin. Have you heard the story about the orchid that grows ... underground? You haven’t? Well here goes!

Rhizanthella gardneri is cute, quirky and critically endangered. It’s also an orchid that lives its entire life underground. It even blooms underground, which makes it virtually unique. It lives in western Australia and is called the Western Underground Orchid. Since it lives totally underground, it can’t photosynthesize and gets all its nutrients from fungi that live on the roots of broom bush, a woody shrub of the outback.

There are less than 50 known individuals left in the wild, but scientists have recently discovered something interesting. Even though the little plant can’t photosynthesize and has no green parts at all, it still has chloroplasts – the cells where photosynthesis occurs in plants.

The researchers discovered that compared with normal plants, 70 percent of the genes in the orchid’s chloroplast have been lost. It has only 37 genes which makes it the smallest of all known plant chloroplast genomes.

Of course, there is always the possibility that Rhizanthella isn’t as rare as scientists think it is. Volunteers from the West Australian Native Orchid Study and Conservation Group helped locate these unique orchids. One of the scientists said, “We needed all the help we could get since it often took hours of searching under shrubs on hands and knees to find just one underground orchid!”

You know, it’s possible that there could be a lot more of them. They are underground, you know!

So, we have a plant that lives entirely underground. Now would you believe a plant that uses origami to disperse its seeds? Read on!

Ice plants are succulents; fleshy plants that resemble Aloe vera. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute in Dresden have discovered that Delosperma nakurense, an ice plant that’s native to Tanzania, puts its seeds in an origami box that unfolds and releases them when it rains.

The plant, which grows in the desert, thereby ensures that its seeds have a good chance of escaping the pod at just the critical time when there’s enough water to allow them to germinate.

The seed capsule lids unfold on a hinge when wet and then close again when it’s dry. This also changes the curvature of the lids so that the valves tightly seal the seed compartments when it’s dry. The lids are triangular, so that the open seed capsule looks like a five-pointed star.

The researchers think the mechanism can be used for technical applications because the energy for the directed movement is stored in the material and they hope to transfer the concept to technology that could be used in biomedicine or architecture.

Plant origami. It’s a strange and wonderful world!