Mood and whatever else strikes my fancy...

Orchidea73 · Jan 10, 2022

How like a winter hath my absence been
From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year!
What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen!

https://i.imgur.com/wvuehhR.jpg

Orchidea73 · Jan 14, 2022

105 Years this Year...

"The leaves were long, the grass was green,
The hemlock-umbels tall and fair,
And in the glade a light was seen
Of stars in shadow shimmering.
Tinúviel was dancing there
To music of a pipe unseen,
And light of stars was in her hair,
And in her raiment glimmering."

Orchidea73 · Jan 15, 2022

"With most species of orchids, it is not the fittest but the most deceptive ones that survive." The problem is that most orchids are too dispersed through the jungle for the wind to carry pollen to them; they depend on insects or birds for this crucial service. But since they do not provide any food or other nutrients for these carriers, orchids have to trick them into perpetuating their species.

They can play on greed, lust, or fear." He pointed to a tubelike column surrounded by five-inch-long spidery-looking petals that belonged, according to its label, to the Epidendrum tribe. "This orchid deceives mosquitoes." He described the deception, level by level. First, the orchid emits a fragrance that simulates the nectar the mosquito feeds on. Then the mosquito, following the scent, is lured from the flower petals into the narrow tube. Here it runs into the orchid's pollen pod, gets jammed in the eye, and is blinded. Finally, leaving the orchid, the blinded mosquito flies on until it passes another orchid of the Epidendrum tribe and gets a whiff of the same false nectar odor. Again, it pushes its way into the orchid's narrow tunnel, only this time it deposits the pollen that has stuck to its eye.

Other orchids use what is called pseudo-copulation," Angleton continued, "to trigger the sexual instincts of an insect." He described how the Tricerus orchid has on its flower a three-dimensional replica of the underside of a female fly. It even bristles with the hairs—and odors—of a fly. When the male fly sees this replica, he lands on it and attempts to have sex with it. In doing so, he comes in contact with the pollen pod, which attaches itself to his underside. Eventually, he flies off. If he then passes another Tricerus orchid, he repeats the frustrating process, and delivers the pollen.

Angleton then directed my attention to an amazing orchid that had on its flower a picture of a bee's head. He explained that when a wasp sees this image, it assumes its mortal enemy is just below it, and instinctively attacks. The wasp's stinger plunges through the picture of the bee petal into the pollen pod, which sticks to it. By repeating this "pseudo-attack" when it passes another such orchid, it pollinates it. Angleton said these deceptions depended on "a process of provocation." The victims are duped because they are keyed to respond to certain information in nature. Insects do not have the ability to discriminate between what is real and what is mimicked.