Man’s Best Friend Helps Find Elusive Endangered Orchid

Dogs are known for their powerful olfactory senses and have been used by humans over the years to detect objects from drugs to electronics to truffles. This sensory superpower makes them the star of a captivating project at Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix, AZ, posing the question: can canines be used to locate hard-to-find or dormant rare plants? Could dogs actually help conservationists monitor and locate rare plant populations that have not been observed in recent years or are considered historic? To begin to answer these questions, detection dogs at Desert Botanical Garden were tasked with finding a rare endemic orchid, Spiranthes delitescens (Canelo Hills ladies’ tresses orchid), with a challenging twist — the plants are so rare that no samples were available to train the dogs’ noses on!  Read more…