WOCSB

Orchid Facts

Orchid Pollinators
Although orchid pollinators tend to be insects (86%), birds and bats visit orchid flowers as well. Bees and wasps are the most common orchid visitors, tending to pollinate yellow and green flowers which often provide nectar for the pollinator, and visual color or "nectar guides" to direct the bees to the column. Flies pollinate brown, maroon and full green flowers that often are (often unpleasantly) fragrant (fruity, fetid, or of carrion) but have no nectar. Butterflies pollinate pleasantly fragrant flowers that are yellow, orange, red and bluish. These flowers often have nectar guides and spurs (equal in length to the long tongues of the butterflies) filled with nectar! Moths visit night-fragrant white flowers. Some orchid flowers never fully open (cleistogamous), and are self-pollinated.

Some orchid flowers mimic their pollinator: Trichoceros species (fly mimics) and Ophyrs species (bee mimics) look and smell like a female of the species and thus the male species attempts to mate with the flower, and in doing so, pollinates it. Orchid flowers can trap their pollinator (Paphiopedilum species), with exit only possible by brushing against the pollinia. Another trap species (Coryanthes speciosa) has bucket traps where the only exit from a pool of liquid is first past the stigma, then the pollinia. Still other orchids (Cycnoches species) have spring loaded pollinia, that are projected onto the back of the visiting bee.