Pixiq

So what exactly is it about orchids — those flowers with a reputation for mystery, beauty, intrigue, and generally regarded as exotic, beguiling… sophisticated even. If you want to choose a bouquet of flowers for someone special, then it is hard to beat orchids — not least because they tend to be expensive and everyone knows it!

SEX: the real ingredient. The minute you start to delve and find out more about orchids, you realize intrigue goes far beyond appearance, sex features highly in many aspects of their existence, from physical form to subtle and devious ploys for attracting insect pollinators by deliriously aphrodisiacal scents.

It begins with the name Orchid, which derives from the ancient Greek ‘Oρχις’ meaning testicles and was used in ancient times by Theophrastus — a reference to the two oblate spheroidal tubers of some ground orchids. At the time when the 'doctrine of signatures' held sway, if a part of a plant resembled any bit of the human anatomy, it could be used to effect some sort of cure or aid. Hence the use as an aphrodisiac... the larger of the tubers ensured male children, the smaller females... what a surprise. Shakespeare makes reference in Hamlet to a woodland orchid ‘Early Purple Orchid’ (Orchis mascula — note the mascula or male bit in the name?), calling them ‘long purples — dead men’s purples’ in an obvious sexual reference. The myth of orchid tubers as an aphrodisiac has lingered, and in Turkey populations have been destroyed to secure tubers for a glutinous material called ‘Salep’ used in a tea and in ice-cream amongst other things.

Where do orchids stand in the scheme of things ?

 Before we cut to the plant pornography, let’s just take a moment to assess.

• There are probably 30,000 or so species scattered worldwide from the equator to deep within the Arctic Circle. Exact numbers are impossible to give because there are doubtless many species still waiting to be discovered in tropical and equatorial forests where they abound and sometimes botanists just can't agree on what constitute a separate species.

• When it comes to artificially produced hybrids, varieties and cultivars, then we are talking about hundreds of thousands.

• Only the daisy family can boast more species and more has been written about orchids than any other plants (possibly) other than roses.

• Orchids first appeared on planet earth in the late Cretaceous period (circa 100 million years ago) and may have co-existed with dinosaurs: much later, Neanderthals may even have wooed their mates with bunches of orchids... some still do (but don’t quote me)

Orchids have been good to me: 

My first few books were on wild orchids and those, plus articles and loads of published inages, got me invited to do lecture tours in the USA and other countries. Maybe I've had it bad, but there are others much more severely afflicted with Orchidomania (or Orchidioti as Italian friends say). For me, it's often just an excuse for getting out some incredible places and enjoying being there…

So what makes an orchid an orchid? 

Well, orchid flowers are zygomorphic: they have a bilateral symmetry, i.e. you can cut them down the centre into two equal parts just one way… but so, you might say, do pea flowers and many others. Yes, but orchids have a modified third petal, the lip or labellum which is THE orchid characteristic, and the sheer diversity of its size, form, colour… makes orchids so intriguing. This modified third petal can become a little pouch or shoe, a tiny dancing figure, a lizard, insects, spider bodies... and a whole host of things limited only by your imagination.

There are two main divisions of orchids: Epiphytes: by far the largest group comprises those orchids that live on trees and are the basis of much of the commercial cut flower industry; Terrestrials: orchids are those with tubers and rhizomes in the soil or some other subtsrate. Most tropical orchids are epiphytes whilst the wild orchids of North America and the whole of Europe are terrestrials... there are many more Epiphytes than terrestrials.

Where it begins for orchids and for me

Orchids start from the tiniest of seeds that are little more than a nucleus with a surrounding membrane. Most, if not all, depend on being invaded by a microscopic fungus and a ding-dong battle commences where the orchid seed digests the part of the fungal mycelia within it whilst the fungus is sustained by nutrients from the soil or other material (such as moss cushions) around it. Eventually, the tiny orchid seed grows to form a proto-corm or proto-tuber then puts out leaves. But it can take years before a plant reaches flowering size. Woodland orchids can retain this dependency for life.

I've often wondered whether orchids are truly beautiful — intriguing, yes... bizarre, certainly. But to illustrate just how bizarre orchid life can be, let me tell you a tale of a genus of orchids — Ophrys — which has fascinated me ever since I found my first bee orchid (Ophrys apifera) on some sand dunes near my home in South Wales.

Later when involved in postgraduate research and getting deeply frustrated by some blind alleys, I bought a book on Mediterranean flowers by Anthony Huxley and Oleg Polunin and first saw those pages of tiny orchid faces, even more bizarre than the bee orchid. I was hooked and that day, traveling on the London underground back to where I was living, I had no inkling that less than a decade later I would be writing and illustrating a book on orchids with Anthony Huxley.

Straight from the botanical Kama Sutra

The bee orchid is one member of the genus OPHRYS, mainly Mediterranean insect mimics, which for their survival have evolved an astonishing strategy. The flowers emit scents that are complex chemical cocktails that mimick the pheromones (sexual attractants) of small female wasps. Males of these wasps emerge from the ground in spring before their females and are attracted by the scents.

When close enough, visual stimuli kick in, for the flowers resemble exaggerated shapes of wasp females; some even have mirror-like patches that look like reflections from insect wings. A small deluded male bee flies in, lands on the flower and in a state of sexual delirium tries to mate with the lip. There are also hairs on the lip of the right elasticity and length positioned to stimulate the hapless wasp. Eventually (because males of most animal species take time to face reality) the wasp senses that something is amiss. It whirrs around, seemingly agitated, even biting the lip. Behavioural biologists call this displacement activity: maybe acute frustration would be nearer the mark.

In the process its head touches two small sacks and simultaneously releases two club-shaped pollen bundles above that stick fast (these sacks contain nature's equivalent of superglue). Some males position themselves upside down on the lip and so these pollen bundles adhere to the abdomen. 

The small wasps fly away, but a reasonable number reach other flowers of the same species, repeat the process and this time leave pollen bundles thus ensuring fertilization. Amazingly, each species of Ophrys produces a signature scent attracting a unique species of female wasp — though sometimes pollen from one species is carried to a different species and hybrids result.

Subterfuge and illusion is rife in the Orchid world, but nowhere has it been so cunningly evolved as in these small European insect mimics.