“Fool me once…BZZZZZZZ!” Bumblebee buzzed angrily as she whizzed past. As she bumbled on through the bracken fern and around the blueberry bushes, I think I heard her mumbling, “Why does everything have to have hardly any nectar and pollen? Bzzzzz… and to think I found a huge pink luscious-looking flower and, BZZZZZZ, I got stuck inside it for a while and had to squeeze through a tunnel to get out… of all things. And I had to go through all of that for nothing!” Then off she zoomed through the bracken fern and around the blueberry bushes.
Shortly, at another lady’s slipper, I heard a commotion and saw the flower shaking. Before I even had a chance to raise my camera, Bumblebee scrambled out of the exit hole and flew away. I reckoned the flower had looked too tempting to her, because you should have heard her buzzing, “Fool me twice…!” as she flew away, or at least that is how I interpreted it.
Later, I was still walking through the bracken fern and among the blueberry bushes looking for more lady’s slippers when I heard an angry buzzing. Now, this could’ve been a different bumblebee, but I reckoned it was Bumblebee’s third encounter with the pink lady’s slipper, because I heard… well, I’ll just repeat what I heard, since maybe by now you can understand it. “Bzzzzzzzzz, bzzzzzzzzzZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzZZZZZZtttt, BZZZZZ, bzzzzzZZZZzzzzzZZZZZzzzzz, BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ, bzzzzzzzz,” and she came tearing out through a hole she ripped in the lady’s slipper pouch (that’s cheating, by the way) and went off somewhere, maybe to where there were no lady’s slippers, bracken fern, or blueberry bushes.
Let’s talk about what the lady’s slipper “did,” and what just happened to Bumblebee.
Bumblebee was tricked by the lady’s slipper’s false advertisement of a pollen/nectar reward. The flower’s construction, colors, and design were a sign to Bumblebee to visit the flower, similar to how we know what to expect when we see a big department store sign. The lady’s slipper even had signs, like those lines by the slit in the pouch, that directed Bumblebee as to where to enter.
Now the thing is, that entrance slit is actually a trapdoor. Once Bumblebee went in, she couldn’t exit the flower’s pouch where she had come in. To top that off, there was no reward of nectar or pollen inside the pouch. Imagine if you saw a store sign and went in at the entrance, expecting to get the things on your shopping list, only to find the store was empty. To top that off, you couldn’t go back out the front doors.
The lady’s slipper does have an exit (two of them actually) at the end of a small tunnel near the top of the flower. To exit, Bumblebee had to crawl through this tunnel. As she went, she had to squeeze under the stigma, which would have scraped off any pollen (and thus pollinate this lady’s slipper) if Bumblebee had previously visited any other lady’s slippers. After passing under the stigma, Bumblebee would have encountered two exit holes, one to the right and one to the left at the end of the tunnel. Either exit had a sticky glob of pollen called a “pollinium” positioned so as to apply one to her back as she exited.
With her visits, Bumblebee may have helped cross-pollinate a lady’s slipper and thus aided the production of thousands and thousands of lady’s slipper seeds by accidentally participating in the “pollination-by-trickery” scheme of the lady’s slipper. White lady’s slippers use the same pollination-by-trickery system. The yellow lady’s slipper also uses this trickery with a slight modification—its pouch has a hole that works like a pitfall trap which makes it difficult for the bees to escape from the pouch/moccasin.
After a pollinated lady’s slipper’s seeds mature, the seed pod develops slits that open to disperse the thousands and thousands of tiny seeds into the wind. These dust-sized seeds are shaken out in salt-shaker-like fashion and then blown around to other locations like dust in the wind. The tiny seeds have no endosperm (food stores), so they are basically air pockets holding a little genetic information along with a miniscule amount of some substances to pay a fungus to help it germinate and grow.
In order for a lady’s slipper seed to germinate and thrive, it must land where there is this correct symbiotic fungus. This fungus will provide nutrients and water for the seed to germinate, and, later, similar provisions for the growing orchid. The fungus, of course, requires “payment” in the form of ammonium or sugars from the lady’s slipper’s photosynthesis. Is it any wonder this fungus-fed, pollinated-by-trickery orchid is an uncommon sight?
Speaking of orchids’ dust-seeds, have you ever noticed those tiny black specks in vanilla bean ice cream? Well, those specks are the seeds of the vanilla orchid. Vanilla seeds are a bit larger and look different from the lady’s slipper seeds, but they might be easier to find than lady’s slipper seeds. And, yes, vanilla orchids, like most orchids, are tricksters. Since this pollination by trickery is a rare occurrence, vanilla orchids are hand-pollinated so the vanilla bean crop will produce enough to meet the demand for real vanilla flavoring.
When you are out looking for pink lady’s slippers and are walking through the bracken fern and among the blueberry bushes, I hope you are fortunate enough to see a bumblebee visit a lady’s slipper. I have rarely seen visitors to the lady’s slippers, but while I’m out there looking anyway, I always enjoy taking notice of ants visiting the bracken fern’s extra-floral nectaries. The ants are getting “paid” for their service of patrolling the fern for pests. I also enjoy watching the various bees and small bumblebees that are busy buzz-pollinating (flower sonication) the blueberries. Part of the fun I have is thinking of the contrast between how the blueberries and the bracken fern reward the ants and the bees for their services, but the lady’s slipper tricks the bees into work for her with no reward. Most of the fun for me, though, is remembering Bumblebee buzzing, “Fool me once…BZZZZZZZ!”