Orchids: These Flowers Are Pretty Sus

These beautiful mimics charm bugs with their scent. They're masters of disguise that can take the shape of hundreds of different animals. Prepare to take an incredulous look at the deceptive world of orchid mimicry. These flowers are pretty sus. I'm Tasha the Amazon and you're watching Floralogic. Orchids are one of the most beautiful and diverse plant families. There's almost 30,000 known species in the wild and hundreds of new species are discovered every year. Over the past 80 million years, they've colonized every continent except Antarctica and have conquered almost every type of ecosystem. These seductive, deciduous herbs have been making people frisky for thousands of years. Great artists like Georgia O'Keeffe have explored their feminine beauty and likened them to some female body parts. Even their name comes from the Greek word for testicle due to the shape of their pseudobulbs, which were once even thought to be a foolproof aphrodisiac. Part of their success comes from being able to extract energy from the fungi that grows around its roots. This has helped them thrive in low-light areas like in dense forests. Over time, this has led to a reduced photosynthetic capacity, meaning that several species can't grow without their mutualist fungi. They've also increased their chances of success by colonizing trees. Seventy percent of all orchids grow on trees and two-thirds of all living plants that make trees their home are orchids. These species are amazing at absorbing nutrients from debris that accumulates on the tree. They also capture moisture from the air and tree bark and store it in their pseudobulb. But by far their greatest tool is their flowers. They are absolutely stunning and incredibly good at tricking animals into pollinating them. Most flowers offer nectar as an incentive for insects to fly in and get covered in pollen. But about a third of orchids have figured out that a little trickery goes a long way. The European bee orchid is one of the best examples of this. Their flowers emit the sex pheromones of female pollinator bees. Males are attracted to them and are invariably duped into landing on the flower's labellum. Which is the same shape and color as the female bee. The males try to mate with the flower thinking it's a bee and in the struggle they get covered in pollen. After a while the male gets frustrated and leaves. He learns his lesson and stops visiting flowers with that scent. The brilliance of the bee orchids is that they emit slightly different bee sex pheromones. So the male will fly away and eventually get tricked again. This time by a different bee orchid. This ensures that the pollen doesn't go to a nearby bee orchid and prevents inbreeding. Chemical and physical mimicry help orchids attract thousands of insect species. The awesomely named Dracula orchids produce scents of rotten meat and cat pee to attract flies. Oncidium orchids resemble male bees which incites actual male bees to try to fight them. And Dracaea orchids look and smell like female flower wasps. Pheromones have been proven the more effective attractant. But mimicking animals certainly helps. Orchids are bilaterally symmetrical. Meaning their left side mirrors their right side. This is how most animals are but it's rare in the plant kingdom. So with all these tools and all these species, orchids should be taking over the world, right? Wrong. Their biomass is really low compared to other plants. Needing fungi to grow, being very slow growing, and needing specialized pollinators keeps their numbers fairly low. More importantly, not being too common is an essential part of their strategy. If there were too many tricksters, insects would be less likely to fall for it. Mimics need a healthy amount of honest signals to be effective. Outside of the forest, orchids have found an even greater pollinator. Us. People have been struck with orchid delirium. Yep, that's the official term for orchid fever. There are over 100,000 human-made hybrids, grown in greenhouses all over the world. Some of these hybrids are over 1,000 years old. And as a whole, the orchid trade is worth about $4 billion. Different orchid species have different needs. So if you get one, make sure to do some research on how to care for it. Just try not to get one that attracts too many bees or wasps. What plant or fungi should we talk about next? Please let me know in the comments. And don't forget to subscribe for new episodes of Floralogic every other week. Thanks for watching. Take care.