Bee Orchids

September 12, 2023 2:11 PM

Bee orchids mimic the shape and scent of bees in order to lure them into ‘pseudocopulation’, where the male insect attempts to mate with the flower. While the bee gets nothing but a wasted effort, the orchid transfers some of its pollen to the bee. (previously)
posted by sammyo (4 comments total)

The XKCD about the bee orchid always makes me tear up a bit.
posted by tavella at 2:39 PM on September 12, 2023 [5 favorites]

Bee Orchids are pollinated by solitary bees in the southern end of their range, so don’t be too sad.
posted by leotrotsky at 2:45 PM on September 12, 2023

Deleuze & Guattari's favorite!

The orchid deterritorializes by forming an image, a tracing of a wasp; but the wasp reterritorializes on that image. The wasp is nevertheless deterritorialized, becoming a piece in the orchid's reproductive apparatus. But it reterritorializes the orchid by transporting its pollen. Wasp and orchid, as heterogeneous elements, form a rhizome. It could be said that the orchid imitates the wasp, reproducing its image in a signifying fashion (mimesis, mimicry, lure, etc.). But this is true only on the level of the strata – a paralellism between two strata such that a plant organization on one imitates an animal organization on the other. At the same time, something else entirely is going on: not imitation at all but a capture of code, surplus value of code, an increase in valence, a veritable becoming, a becoming-wasp of the orchid and a becoming-orchid of the wasp. Each of these becomings brings about the deterritorialization of one term and the reterritorialization of the other; the two becomings interlink and form relays in a circulation of intensities pushing the deterritorialization ever further. There is neither imitation nor resemblance, only an exploding of two heterogeneous series on the line of flight composed by a common rhizome that can not be attributed to or subjugated by anything signifying. - A Thousand Plateaus

posted by Richard Saunders at 2:55 PM on September 12, 2023

While the bee gets nothing but a wasted effort

Assumes facts not in evidence.
posted by flabdablet at 9:58 PM on September 12, 2023