{"id":7509,"date":"2011-03-16T14:02:58","date_gmt":"2011-03-16T22:02:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/?p=7509"},"modified":"2011-06-28T13:10:30","modified_gmt":"2011-06-28T21:10:30","slug":"the-roadkill-orchid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/2011\/03\/16\/the-roadkill-orchid\/","title":{"rendered":"The Roadkill Orchid"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, but rotting meat works even better. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sciencedaily.com\/releases\/2011\/03\/110314111220.htm\" target=\"_blank\">A strange little South African orchid has figured this out, and attracts pollinating flies with a deathly odor<\/a>. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.orchidspecies.com\/satpumilum.htm\" target=\"_blank\">Satyrium pumilum<\/a> grows as a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/2010\/09\/11\/terrestrial-orchids\/\">terrestrial<\/a> in wet, sandy soil. During the day, its flowers emit a weak scent of decaying flesh. Scientists have been comparing flies on the orchids with flies on nearby roadkill. They&#8217;ve found that the orchids lure a single fly species, and use different scents to steer the flies into position for pollen contact. &#8220;We know it&#8217;s common for orchids to deceive insects into pollinating them. We also know that some plant species can mimic carrion to attract flies. What we didn&#8217;t know was how successful this was,&#8221; said Timotheus van der Niet of the University of KwaZulu-Natal. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sciencedaily.com\/releases\/2011\/03\/110314111220.htm\" target=\"_blank\">The article<\/a> includes a great photo of yellow orchid pollen stuck to the back of a fly. Obviously, this orchid stinks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, but rotting meat works even better. A strange little South African orchid has figured this out, and attracts pollinating flies with a deathly odor. Satyrium pumilum grows as a terrestrial in wet, sandy soil. During the day, its flowers emit a weak scent of decaying [&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":[15,12,22,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cool-growers","category-fragrant-orchids","category-in-the-news","category-mini-orchids"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7509","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=7509"}],"version-history":[{"count":37,"href":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7509\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7544,"href":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7509\/revisions\/7544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}