Plants Behaving Badly

Revel in the ethereal beauty of orchids and examine their exotic flowers, which are shaped for one purpose – to attract pollinators. Many use sex as a lure, impersonating a female bee or wasp.

In this film, we see how orchids deceive insects into helping them, using underhand tricks, including the promise of sex. Bee orchids have flowers that look like female bees and exactly mimic the scent produced by female bees. Male bees are completely fooled and try to mate with the flower and in their misguided frenzy, they pick up the orchid’s pollen.

Carnivorous plants have evolved ways of trapping insects. Snap traps work along the lines of an old-fashioned mousetrap. Scientists have finally worked out how the Venus flytrap can close its trap so quickly.

Roridula, a South African plant covered in sticky resin blobs which trap insects, lack digestive glands. Roridula depend on Pameridea bugs, which are only found among these branches, to process the trapped insects and to leave behind droppings as fertilizer.