{"id":7574,"date":"2011-03-19T13:57:33","date_gmt":"2011-03-19T21:57:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/?p=7574"},"modified":"2011-05-12T09:23:18","modified_gmt":"2011-05-12T17:23:18","slug":"an-orchid-explosion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/2011\/03\/19\/an-orchid-explosion\/","title":{"rendered":"An Orchid Explosion"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The orchid family is full of strange pollination mechanisms. Catasetums have sweet scents, but it&#8217;s their incredible trick for gluing pollen to bees which has intrigued scientists from <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Charles_Darwin\" target=\"_blank\">Darwin<\/a> until now. When a bee touches a hair trigger, the orchid ejects glue and pollen to land on a precise spot on the bee&#8217;s back. I&#8217;ve read descriptions and seen pictures, but nothing captures it like video. Check out &#8220;An Orchid Explosion&#8221; below, courtesy of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sciencefriday.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">NPR&#8217;s ScienceFriday<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p><object classid=\"clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000\" width=\"480\" height=\"290\" codebase=\"http:\/\/download.macromedia.com\/pub\/shockwave\/cabs\/flash\/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0\"><param name=\"flashvars\" value=\"&amp;file=http:\/\/www.podtrac.com\/pts\/redirect.mp4?http:\/\/www.podtrac.com\/pts\/redirect.mp4\/traffic.libsyn.com\/sciencefriday\/orchid-031811.mp4&amp;height=290&amp;width=480&amp;frontcolor=0xffffff&amp;backcolor=0xeeeecc&amp;lightcolor=0xFFFFFF&amp;showdigits=false&amp;autostart=false&amp;showicons=false&amp;usefullscreen=true&amp;wmode=opaque&amp;image=http:\/\/www.sciencefriday.com\/video\/videoicon\/orchidexplodes.jpg&amp;callback=http:\/\/www.sciencefriday.com\/test\/vidstats.php&amp;id=10370&amp;showdownload=true&amp;link=http:\/\/www.podtrac.com\/pts\/redirect.mp4?http:\/\/www.podtrac.com\/pts\/redirect.mp4\/traffic.libsyn.com\/sciencefriday\/orchid-031811.mp4\" \/><param name=\"src\" value=\"http:\/\/www.sciencefriday.com\/tools\/players\/mediaplayer.swf\" \/><param name=\"wmode\" value=\"opaque\" \/><param name=\"allowfullscreen\" value=\"true\" \/><embed type=\"application\/x-shockwave-flash\" width=\"480\" height=\"290\" src=\"http:\/\/www.sciencefriday.com\/tools\/players\/mediaplayer.swf\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" wmode=\"opaque\" flashvars=\"&amp;file=http:\/\/www.podtrac.com\/pts\/redirect.mp4?http:\/\/www.podtrac.com\/pts\/redirect.mp4\/traffic.libsyn.com\/sciencefriday\/orchid-031811.mp4&amp;height=290&amp;width=480&amp;frontcolor=0xffffff&amp;backcolor=0xeeeecc&amp;lightcolor=0xFFFFFF&amp;showdigits=false&amp;autostart=false&amp;showicons=false&amp;usefullscreen=true&amp;wmode=opaque&amp;image=http:\/\/www.sciencefriday.com\/video\/videoicon\/orchidexplodes.jpg&amp;callback=http:\/\/www.sciencefriday.com\/test\/vidstats.php&amp;id=10370&amp;showdownload=true&amp;link=http:\/\/www.podtrac.com\/pts\/redirect.mp4?http:\/\/www.podtrac.com\/pts\/redirect.mp4\/traffic.libsyn.com\/sciencefriday\/orchid-031811.mp4\"><\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n<p>Unlike most orchids, Catasetums have separate male and female flowers. This video only shows the pollen process for the male flowers. We can hope for a future <a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">NPR<\/a> video to show the female side of things. Also <a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/2011\/03\/18\/134658896\/Deception-Sex-Aeration-The-Secret-Life-Of-Orchids\" target=\"_blank\">check out the podcast &#8220;The Secret Life Of Orchids,&#8221;<\/a> which has a discussion about this story, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/2011\/03\/16\/the-roadkill-orchid\/\">the recent Roadkill Orchid story,<\/a> and an interview with the same South African scientist quoted there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The orchid family is full of strange pollination mechanisms. Catasetums have sweet scents, but it&#8217;s their incredible trick for gluing pollen to bees which has intrigued scientists from Darwin until now. When a bee touches a hair trigger, the orchid ejects glue and pollen to land on a precise spot on the bee&#8217;s back. I&#8217;ve [&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":[12,22,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7574","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fragrant-orchids","category-in-the-news","category-videos"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7574","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=7574"}],"version-history":[{"count":43,"href":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7574\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8505,"href":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7574\/revisions\/8505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}