NOVA | Orchid Hunter | A Plant With Smarts
NOVA | Orchid Hunter | A Plant With Smarts
by Susan Orlean
PBS.org
The orchid family could have died out like dinosaurs if insects had chosen to feed on simpler plants and not on orchids. The orchids wouldn't have been pollinated, and without pollination they would never have grown seeds, while self-pollinating simple plants growing nearby would have seeded themselves constantly and spread like mad and taken up more and more space and light and water, and eventually orchids would have been pushed to the margins of evolution and disappeared.
Instead, orchids have multiplied and diversified and become the biggest flowering plant family on Earth because each orchid species has made itself irresistible.
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