Orchid, butt-ugly
It’s not often that the words orchid and ugly are used in the same sentence. The name orchid itself conjures up images of showy, delicate flowers of spectacular beauty. And this is true of most orchids, of course. But the family Orchidaceae includes an astonishing diversity of flowers from the big and colorful to small, greenish, inconspicuous ones. In 2020, The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew introduced what they described as the ugliest orchid on earth. More about it in a moment, but first a little more about orchids in general.
How many kinds of orchids do you suppose there are? I’m not talking about artificial hybrids created by humans, only those distinct kinds or species that occur naturally. Hundreds, you say? Not even close. A thousand? Keep going. To date, taxonomists have discovered and named about 28,000 species of orchids… with more added every year. While this number is attention grabbing, what is even more impressive is the diversity among orchids in form, size, and color. The rare beauty of orchids that we admire exists for a necessary function: to attract insect pollinators.
Almost all orchids are perennial, with shoots and leaves emerging from a rhizome. Some are evergreen with leaves functioning for more than a year. The visible parts of others die back at the close of each growing season. There are terrestrial orchids that grow on the ground in soil or other sediments. And epiphytic orchids perched on tree limbs in the canopy.
Their flowers have three petals. Two lateral ones, called wings, resemble each other. But the third, middle petal is another story. This one, the labellum or lip, is often hugely modified for the benefit of pollinators, frequently with a sac bearing nectar and brightly colored and/or scented tissues. Seeds are tiny and dustlike. Some orchids are dependent upon one or a few pollinator species. Others attract a variety of pollinators. Most have a mutualistic symbiosis with a fungus. And, in extreme cases, a few get all their nutrients from the fungus, effectively becoming parasites. Sometimes ugly parasites.
The attraction of huge, come-and-get-me orchids are obvious to bees, flies, and us. But the sex life of orchids is far more interesting than anything dreamed up in a steamy romance novel, the details of the intricate dance between flower and insect being far more complex and unlikely. There are markings invisible to our eyes, for example, that shine like beacons in the ultraviolet part of the spectrum guiding insects onto the orchids as efficiently as lights on an airport runway. And there are chemical signals, too. Compounds exist among orchids that mimic sex and aggregation pheromones used by insects to find one another and converge upon sources of food. Such contrivances are at play, even among small and inconspicuous orchids. Malaxis monophyllos, for example, relies more heavily on chemical attractants than billboard-like flowers. It is the only species of the genus occurring in Europe, and has one of the smallest orchid flowers on the continent. Malaxis includes about 300 species, mostly in the Old and New World tropics, with small greenish-colored flowers, only 3-10mm across. Their scent, reminiscent of mushrooms, is bolstered by alkanes among which are compounds resembling insect pheromones.
Another example, Dracula lafleurii, has a flower that both looks and smells like a mushroom, attracting flies that are typically associated with real mushrooms. And in the genus Bulbophyllum are flowers that variously small like urine, blood, dung, or rotting flesh and which attract hordes of flies. Charles Darwin’s 1862 book On the Various Contrivances by which British and Foreign Orchids are Fertilised by Insects, and on the Good Effects of Intercrossing is a classic in natural history. Passages from the volume were shared by Dressler in a delightful 1960 article. It’s enduring popularity among orchid fanciers and book collectors is monetarily measurable, too, with first editions fetching more than a thousand dollars.
Now, back to the ugliest orchid. Orchids of the genus Gastrodia are terrestrial, lacking leaves, consisting of fleshy underground rhizomes and upright stems bearing some number of brownish flowers that twist and rotate as they develop to end up on their backs, rotated about 180 degrees by the time they are fully open. They are mycotrophic, that is, they get their nutrients through a symbiotic relationship with fungi. The genus is native to Asia, Australia, New Zealand, central Africa, and islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. About 90 species have been named so far.
The envelope, please. In the category of most ugly orchid the winner is: Gastrodia agnicellus. Based on the photographs that I’ve seen, I would have to agree. Its flowers are both small, less than half an inch across, and butt ugly. They have been accurately described as brown, fleshy and grotesque. My own first impression was of a lump of gristle, chewed up and spit out. What this disgusting orchid lacks in corsage appeal, it more than makes up for in fascinating natural history. It is likely pollinated by flies who, judging from my trash and my dog’s droppings, are not very discriminating when it comes to appearances. This orchid, found in Madagascar, spends its life underground in the shadows of a humid forest, emerging only when it is time to flower. It is entirely dependent upon its fungus association, and its scent is said to be musky and rose-like. If you wish to see a picture of this particular version of ugly, it is easily located on the Internet.
In what at first may seem oxymoronic, the specific epithet actually means “little lamb,” or “lambkin,” evoking entirely different feeling than the appearance of this orchid. But it is a clever choice of name with three meanings, pointing to a woolly covering on the rhizome, lamb ear-shaped petals, as well as the name of the talented botanical illustrator, Deborah Lambkin, who drew the new species.
Further Reading
Hermans, Johan (2020) Gastrodia agnicellus: a new holomycotrophic orchid from southeast Madagascar (Orchidaceae). Curtis’s Botanical Magazine 37: 385-395.
Jermakowicz, Edyta et al (2022) The floral signals of the inconspicuous orchid Malaxis monophyllos: How to lure small pollinators in an abundant environment. Biology (Basel) 11: 640. 20 pp. doi: 10.3390/biology11050640.
Policha, Tobias et al. (2016) Disentangling visual and olfactory signals in mushroom-mimicking Dracula orchids using realistic three-dimensional printed flowers. New Phytologist 210: 1058-1071.
Dressler, Robert L. (1960) Classics of orchid literature. The Orchid Digest, September-October, pp. 347-350.