Yes, I surely would love to see a bumblebee flying around with an extra pair of butterfly-like antennae. Wouldn’t you? That’s why I really should go back to a certain forested cove.
You see, I was on a quest to see yellow lady’s slippers when the trail crossed a tiny bouldery stream. There, growing on the flats under the maidenhair ferns were some squat little orchids. Imagine small lavender and white orchids with maidenhair ferns towering over them…that picture makes you want to visit the spot too, doesn’t it?
This was my first encounter with the showy orchis (Galearis spectabilis). After the thrill of spotting a new orchid, my first thought was, What trick does this orchid play on its bees? Shortly, I reckoned that I could use a budding twig to mimic a bee and reveal the orchid’s tricks.
A nearby twig with an unopened bud at its tip was soon entering the flower in search of nectar. I don’t remember buzzing like a bee as I pretended my bud was a bee and made it approach the flower, but you are welcome to imagine so.
The bud worked like a bee! As I backed the bud bee out of the orchid, along came two stalked pollinia that were firmly glued to my bee mimic’s forehead. Then I was imagining bumblebees flying around with extra pairs of butterfly-like antennae. It would be great fun to see a bumblebee visit an orchid and see those attached pollinia contact the receptive surface at the throat of the nectar spur. The fun would be in witnessing and appreciating one more ingenious cross-pollination mechanism the Creator gave to the orchids.
Anyway, it’s too bad, but I didn’t see any bumblebees visiting the orchids. The only thing I saw was a small wasp trying to cheat some nectar out of the orchid by crawling into the nectar spur. I doubt it was successful, as the spur is narrow and designed for long-tongued bees.
Something else I remember seeing there around the orchids and among the maidenhair ferns was big millipedes—lots of them. Oh, and patches of bear corn (squawroot).
Maybe I’ll slip back to that maidenhair cove in the woods near a stream just down the hill from the yellow lady’s slippers.
