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There’s no getting around it: almost everything there is to say about the orchid has to do with, well, – sex. Quite simply, orchids epitomize all that’s exotic, erotic and mysterious in the world of flowers. So take a break from the frigid toils of January snow shoveling and warm yourself up with a look at the world’s hottest botanical bombshell: the orchid.
To begin with, orchids are everywhere: one out of every ten flowering plants on earth is an orchid. They are found in every habitat on every continent in the world; from arctic bogs to the high
canopy of equatorial rainforests. With over 35,000 species, and over 100,000 registered hybrids, botanists agree that these are one of the most diverse, developed and successful life forms on the planet.
The reason for their success is simple: from the ground – or below ground – up they’re built for sex. The name orchid comes from the Greek word orchus, meaning testicles, because the tubers of the flower resemble nothing so much as human testes. While they vary wildly in size, shapes, textures and colours, every orchid flower has six parts: three coloured sepals above, two petals below, and a third specialized petal called the ‘lip’ surrounding the reproductive parts that form a central column in the heart of the bloom.
Orchid pollination is tricky so the flower sets itself up to make the most of a single opportunity with a pollinator. The word bubble above these flowers should read a sultry ‘come into my boudoir’. Many blooms have evolved to look like
particular bees, wasps, or spiders. They wrap themselves in come-hither scents ranging from the irresistible to the putrid according to what will appeal to the object of their desire. |
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Others shamelessly produce the scent of a willing female and provide textures that stimulate male insects’ sexual organs into what botanists call pseudo-copulation. When it’s over, the bee may fly away unsatisfied, but the orchid is well sated with a delivery of pollen – or the dispatch of its own.
Not all orchids are so completely self-obsessed: some provide a delicious banquet of pollen on their lower lip to attract pollinators. Others produce erotic oils and perfumes insects must bathe in before going courting themselves.
One remarkably wily variety, o. oncidium, stimulates a different set of passions: resembling a male invader bee, they flutter in the breeze, inciting native bees into a turf war. Furious and frenzied, the native bees dive-bomb the blooms – ensuring fertilization.
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For all their elaborate evolutionary craftiness, only one orchid has a practical use for humans. Crushed seed pods from vanilla plantifolia were used by Aztecs for centuries to flavour their favourite drink: hot chocolate. When Spanish conquistadors brought the plant back to Europe, their hopes of building a vanilla production industry were thwarted by their inability to propagate the exotic plant.
Finally, two hundred years later, a former slave, Edmund Albius, discovered a process of hand pollination which became known as the marriage de vanille. What he didn’t know was that his method of piercing the membrane of the flower with a wooden sliver, collecting the male pollen and transferring it to the sticky female stigma was the exact process the Aztecs themselves had used for centuries.
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