Human beings also seem to find them irresistible, even addictive. When an orchid craze swept England in the nineteenth century, wealthy collectors hired orchid hunters to scour the tropics for rare species. At Harvard, botany professor Oakes Ames traveled as far as South America and the Philippines in search of new orchid varieties, and collected some 64,000 specimens. In the quest to attract insect pollinators, some orchids use scent. Certain varieties smell sweetly of coconut or vanilla.
Orchids can also be amazing mimics.
When a male wasp lands and tries to mate with the flower, he unknowingly ends up with pollen stuck to his body. One part of the exhibit shows a white, star-shaped orchid that Darwin identified in Madagascar. He observed that its throat was almost 12 inches long, and that all the nectar sat at the bottom. Darwin predicted that a moth would be found with a tongue long enough to reach that nectar. Although his idea was ridiculed, of course he was right.