Orchids of Euskal Herria

2004/06/22 Elhuyar Zientzia

• Botanika
• Ekologia

Orchids are characterized by the transformation of one of the flower petals, forming the typical structures of the animal kingdom. Ophrys, for example, mimic the female bee, with her hair. And also, flowers smell the sex hormones of bees. At these bee orchids, we take the smell of apple, but remind the insect of the female of its species. With such a good imitation, for the brown bee is usually a real sexual call and often comes to lay the seed on the flower.

Due to this surprising transformation of the petal, botanists say that orchids are at the peak of plant evolution. And the transformation has a single goal: for the insect to polyline another orchid pollen flower. Nothing more! But behind that beauty is a trap.

For Javier Benito, an orchid expert, orchids are the most lying plants. In fact, "this part of the flower, the labellum, imitating the body of the female, is placed on it the male and, as if it were real, tries to cover it. While, without realizing it, the pollen is stuck to the body. Then he realizes that he has been sprayed and gone, but he has already stuck the pollen. And the flower got what it wanted: pollination." El riojano Javier Benito is doing a doctoral thesis on orchids of the Iberian Peninsula.

Not all orchids use sex to attract insects. They also serve food. "For example, those of the genus Orchys use the nectar as a hook so that they approach eating insects and then carry the pollen stuck in the body. acts as. Serapias, on the other hand, offer insects a den. The flowers create a kind of tube in which small bees enter when it is cold, spend the night and leave in the morning with the sun."

Thanks to these strategies developed by orchids very curious flowers are created. For example, the "lady orchid" that reminds a girl, or the "hanging man orchid". But actually, the orchid name comes from orquis, which means "barrabila" in Greek. The one who baptized him had seen a great similarity between the male sex organs and the two tubers of the orchids, one of them completely dry and wrinkled by the last triumph. In Turkey, on special days, they eat the tubers of orchids. They are considered aphrodisiacs, probably because of their similarity with reproductive organs.