Careful, It’s a Trap!

Arthur P. Johnson

If you asked me to name the Sexiest Flower on Earth, I might say Lady Slipper Orchid…

Because this simple name embraces an entire Botanical Family*…

  • Which in turn contains five genera…
  • Which, in their own turn, include some 165 species…
  • Comprising many hundreds of hybrids and cultivars, such as the Paphiopedilum hybrid you see here…

Most of which I think are pretty danged sexy.

Lady Slippers are so named because one of the orchid’s customary petals grows into an ingenious structure called a pouch.

And this slipper-shaped pouch is engineered to trap and coerce hapless insects, literally forcing them to pollenate! Plus, as if adding insult to indignity…

A Lady Slipper deludes the fly with phony food or sex…

Filling the air with an irresistible fragrance, this Paphiopedilum Lady Slipper displays a glistening, shield-shaped, yellow staminode.

“Must be amazing nectar!” thinks the fly, but he’s wrong! When he lights on the shiny staminode, he touches a slippery lubricant, can’t get a grip and drops into the pouch!

The fly can’t climb out, because the upper lip of the pouch curls inward. His only way out is a special, invisible ladder of hairs in the back.

And the ladder leads straight to a narrow passage, where he’s forced to rub his pollen onto the pistil , then get a new payload of pollen from hidden anthers.

Then, after being forced to pollenate this Lady Slipper, he’ll fly off to another , fall for the same trick, and submit to a similar pollen exchange.

We think of animals being smarter than plants. But who outsmarted whom here?

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*Sort of. The Lady Slipper used to be considered a Botanical Family, and there were clever taxonomists who insisted these flowers weren’t even Orchids, but their own thing. According to this argument, the Lady Slippers slipped away from the Orchids back in dinosaur days and never came back. Then some even more clever taxonomists came along with new-fangled DNA evidence and proved this theory wrong, showing the Lady Slippers were secretly orchids all along. But, whether or not they are Orchids, the name of their family (or sub-family, if indeed they are Orchids) is Cypripedioideae. (Say it three times fast. How about once and slow? This is why the cleverest taxonomists of all just call them Lady Slippers). 

 

Detail of the “Slipper”
#2 in a collection of 3 photographs. After luring a fly to the glistening, shield-shaped, yellow staminode, the Lady Slipper Orchid drops the deluded insect into this bright red pouch. The inside of the pouch is ingeniously engineered with a slippery surface and top rim that curls inward, preventing any exit except via a “back door” that leads straight to the pistil and anthers. What happens next is even more fascinating…
Lady Slipper “Jersey Freckles” #3 of 3
#3 of 3 photographs. Ingenious engineering. Look how the pouch lip curls inward, preventing exit! The fly can only get out by climbing a “ladder” of hairs hidden behind the staminode—where it will either deposit the pollen it carries against the orchid’s stigma (female pollen receptor), or gather a new payload of pollen from the anthers. In some Lady Slippers, the anthers are actually timed to produce their pollen some days after the pistil is fertilize-able, preventing self-pollination. At the end of this fun-house ride, the fly finally crawls out of an opening behind the top of the staminode — and is free to fly off to another Paphiopedilum Lady Slipper, ideally of the same species, repeat the process and deposit his pollen.

Published by Arthur P. Johnson

Arthur P. Johnson is an award-winning creative professional with 30+ years of experience in advertising, product development, screen writing, and television and web production. He has loved photography all his adult life and now he's doing it all the time. It's exciting, exhausting and scary, and he wouldn't have it any other way.

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  1. Pingback: ArthurPixWindows on the WildAphrodite’s Slipper

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