Orchidaceae

Back to Home Page    Back to Flowers    Back to Wild Flowers

Bee Orchids – Ophrys apifera

Bee orchids don’t look exactly like bees.  No matter – they are not there to look like bees, they are there to attract bees.  Ethologists have shown that many species of animals will react more strongly to a model that exaggerates one or more features than they will to the real thing.  A male robin or a male stickleback will attack a red object that does not look like anything.  Rudyard Kipling may have referred to a woman as "a rag, a bone, and a hank of hair", but this was not a reductionist insult to women: it was a recognition of the paucity of signals that can suffice to attract the notice of a man.  

Every cartoonist knows how little is needed to capture the essence of a face, so much so that the cartoonists may actually teach us what the face is "really" like.  So perhaps the bee orchid has found a pattern that attracts a male bee more strongly than a perfect imitation of a female bee would do.  Who knows?  Or perhaps it is still evolving towards a better pattern.  On the other hand, patterning for camouflage is often amazingly perfect in its imitation, because not being seen is often harder than being seen.  The patternings of nightjar and Gaboon viper are wonderfully detailed.

More orchids of the limestone country

Back to Wild Flowers    Back to Flowers    Back to Home Page