{"id":41624,"date":"2024-10-19T19:45:44","date_gmt":"2024-10-20T03:45:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/?p=41624"},"modified":"2024-10-26T12:33:17","modified_gmt":"2024-10-26T20:33:17","slug":"greenhood-orchids-with-booby-traps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/2024\/10\/19\/greenhood-orchids-with-booby-traps\/","title":{"rendered":"Greenhood Orchids with Booby Traps"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/Pterostylis_baptistii_1000px.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-47203 size-thumbnail\" src=\"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/Pterostylis_baptistii_1000px-96x128.jpg\" alt=\"Greenhood, King Greenhood, Pterostylis baptistii, orchid species flowers, Australian native orchid species, unusual flowers, Pacific Orchid Expo 2010, San Francisco, California\" width=\"96\" height=\"128\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/Pterostylis_baptistii_1000px-96x128.jpg 96w, http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/Pterostylis_baptistii_1000px-225x300.jpg 225w, http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/Pterostylis_baptistii_1000px.jpg 750w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 96px) 100vw, 96px\" \/><\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/Pterostylis_curta_1000px.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-47204 size-thumbnail\" src=\"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/Pterostylis_curta_1000px-96x128.jpg\" alt=\"Greenhood, Blunt Greenhood, Pterostylis curta, orchid species flower, Australian native orchid species, unusual flower, grown outdoors in San Francisco, California\" width=\"96\" height=\"128\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/Pterostylis_curta_1000px-96x128.jpg 96w, http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/Pterostylis_curta_1000px-225x300.jpg 225w, http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/Pterostylis_curta_1000px.jpg 750w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 96px) 100vw, 96px\" \/><\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/Pterostylis_truncata_1000px.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-47205 size-thumbnail\" src=\"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/Pterostylis_truncata_1000px-96x128.jpg\" alt=\"Greenhood, Pterostylis truncata, Greenhood flower, Brittle Greenhood, little dumpies, orchid species flower, unusual flower, Australian native orchid species, Glasshouse, RHS Garden Wisley, Woking, Surrey, UK\" width=\"96\" height=\"128\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/Pterostylis_truncata_1000px-96x128.jpg 96w, http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/Pterostylis_truncata_1000px-225x300.jpg 225w, http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/Pterostylis_truncata_1000px.jpg 750w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 96px) 100vw, 96px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.indefenseofplants.com\/blog\/2020\/9\/15\/orchid-booby-traps\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Some orchids can be sneaky.<\/a> Greenhoods, or <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Pterostylis\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Pterostylis orchids<\/a>, have a surprise in store for small flies, gnats, and mosquitoes. These strange flowers have tricky <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/2020\/04\/16\/lovely-orchid-lips\/\">lips<\/a>. As an insect enters the flower, the hinged lip snaps shut. This briefly imprisons the pollinator inside the bloom. The only escape route is a tight squeeze past the pollen. After a few minutes, the bug exits, the lip reopens, and the booby trap is reset for another visitor.<\/p>\n<p>About 300 Greenhood species are native to Australia, New Zealand, New Guinea, New Caledonia, and Indonesia. The photos above show the lips of three species. In the center of each blossom, they look like little twisted tongues rather than flower lips. There are additional Greenhood photos in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.indefenseofplants.com\/blog\/2020\/9\/15\/orchid-booby-traps\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">the article at <em>In Defense of Plants<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>To learn more, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/2009\/04\/25\/pterostylis\/\">check out an old blog post about a Greenhood orchid I used to grow, <em>Pterostylis curta<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Some orchids can be sneaky. Greenhoods, or Pterostylis orchids, have a surprise in store for small flies, gnats, and mosquitoes. These strange flowers have tricky lips. As an insect enters the flower, the hinged lip snaps shut. This briefly imprisons the pollinator inside the bloom. The only escape route is a tight squeeze past the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-in-the-news","category-photos"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41624"}],"version-history":[{"count":40,"href":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41624\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47217,"href":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41624\/revisions\/47217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}