something that has intrigued me for a long time is the ability of animals and plants to mimic other species, and how they manage to do so. Most scientists would say that it is just an accidental morph of evolution, that is to say and accident such as a spot appears on say a butterflies wing, and it then does not get eaten as other predators see it as an eye, then off course many of its offspring will not be eaten either and so the trait is there to stay, and then evolves better over a period of time. OK! but, and there are many buts.Visual appearance is one thing, but mimicking smells is another and besides some insects mimic frogs and snakes and birds, as if there is some other unknown intelligence within the evolution at work. One caterpillar rears up when threatened, displaying a snakes head with a forked tongue and snakes eyes!how many accidents did that species go through to develop that ?The accidents had to be symmetrical in the first accident, which is often so in insects, but multi disciplined tactics are amazing. I am not sure that science really knows the answer to this !Orchids are an amazing group of plants that mimic their pollinating insects. They mimic the colour and supposedly even the pheromones of a particular bee;they do this to ensure pollination, and if that fails many species just self pollinate. It was always thought that the Ophris species in Britain are mainly self pollinating as certain species of bee do not live here as they do on the European continent.With the early spider orchid(Ophrys sphegodes), There are many variants within a small colony thus suggesting that they are more likely to self pollinate otherwise most would look the same as is often the case in the bee orchid.yesterday I visited a local site and counted a dozen very different looking flowers.Here are just a few.
The pollinia of many of the flowers have gone, one would suggest that they have been pollinated by bees, but we have had severe stormy weather and many flowers were crushed by the wind. some pollinia may have been blown off. I adore orchids, they are special among plants,especially the Ophrys genus. the early spider orchid is our earliest flowering species in the UK, closely followed by early purple and green winged. The many other species appear mainly in June, then July to September. I hope to show many other species as the summer goes on.