BY ALPER ÖZKAN (MSN/PhDIII)
d_ozkan@ug.bilkent.edu.tr
A select number of animals seem to be blessed by the near-universal adoration of mankind, being widely regarded as perfectly innocent, angelic creatures for which the very idea of harming another living being must seem abhorrent: doves, ladybugs and dolphins are all animals that few people can bear to hate. Of course, nature does not design her progeny to meet our expectations of their behavior, and any amount of attention paid to the life histories of these animals will reveal that rock doves are practically rats with wings, that ladybugs are ruthless predators and will tear aphid populations to shreds with unparalleled zeal, and that male dolphins frequently kill calves for fun. But this type of veiled horror isn’t unique to the animal realm: orchids, an unfortunately named (the name comes from the Greek word for testicles, which their tuberous roots resemble) yet highly popular group of plants, may outdo any animal when it comes to deception — and that is no small feat when the competition includes the likes of the mimic octopus (which can alter its shape and color to imitate just about anything that swims, crawls or burrows around the ocean floor) or the lyrebird (which can mimic such a massive repertoire of sounds that car alarms, camera snaps, chainsaws and even the chirps of other birds have been found to be incorporated into the courtship songs of males).
Orchids, as Wikipedia will readily tell you, are incredibly diverse, numbering over 20,000 currently described species — to put this into perspective, there are twice as many types of orchids as there are types of grass, and orchids as a whole have four times as many species as our own puny little taxon (by which I mean mammals, not primates) can boast. What Wikipedia won’t tell you so readily (it’s a bit down in the article, really) is that all orchids start life by attracting a soil fungus and sucker punching it out of its nutrients: an orchid seed is tiny and completely worthless for nourishing the developing embryo, and an external food source is necessary for the little seed to even break the soil it is buried in. Fortunately for the plant, however, the soil is teeming with a great diversity of fungi, some of which will germinate around the seed and start invading within — at which point the orchid reverses the nature of their relationship, and uses the fungal tendrils to acquire its much-needed carbon (and sometimes, when the fungus turns out to be linked to another plant, the orchid uses the connection to steal nutrients from that plant too!). While some orchids later return the favor and others are rather indifferent to their fungal foster mothers, still other orchids are parasites in the strict sense and rely largely on the fungus for nutrition — indeed, there are two orchid species that live their entire lives underground, their subterranean flowers pollinated by soil insects.
But it is the mature orchid that shows the greatest aptitude in deceit. Pollination, widely regarded as a give-and-take relationship in which the pollinator receives a meal and the flower benefits from the transfer of pollen, has been refined to an art form by a number of (sometimes unrelated) orchids that refuse to secrete a nutritious offering. The most famous examples, of course, are the bee- and wasp-orchids, whose flowers look and smell so much like female insects that males may try to court and mate with them for hours on end, their futile efforts smearing them with pollen to be deposited at the next deceptive flower. But other orchids are just as apt — though more subtle — in their tricks: Dracula orchids mimic the appearance and odor of mushrooms to draw in mushroom-loving flies (and Cypripedium fargesii does the same by looking like a fungus-infested plant), while other species mimic the alarm pheromones of honeybees to prompt predatory wasps into patrolling the flower, and Epipactis veratrifolia smells of panicked aphids to attract aphid-hunting hoverflies for pollination. There really is no limit when it comes to orchid deception: some orchids resemble genuinely nectar-bearing flowers to lure their quarry, and others trick pollen-collecting bees with fake pollen sources while the real material is smeared over them; one flower may look exactly like a small mushroom growing on the ground, while the next is a perfect visual, tactile and olfactory replica of a wasp. The only constant is the result: a fooled insect, and a pollinated orchid.
That said, I am nowadays quite suspicious of the orchid trade, especially since it seems to be in a perpetual boom. Be wary of orchid traders, and especially around that new breed of small tropical orchids that speak in a bass voice and offer fame and wealth in return for blood offerings.