The flora of PĂ©rigord in South-West France is abundant and diverse. In this blog you can find, in pictures, brief encounters with several hundreds of wild flowers and plants as they grow here in French Perigord. Following the seasons other species are added. An index of scientific and English names you find below on the right.

Corine Oosterlee is a botanist and photographer and she offers guided Botanical Walks and other activities around plants and vegetation in nature in Perigord. Do you want to know more? On www.baladebotanique.fr you can find more information. For Corine's photography see www.corineoosterlee.com. Both websites also in English.

Enjoy!




June 3, 2018

Bee Orchid


Ophryses are Bee Orchids that use a ruse to attract bees and other insects for pollinisation. The flower is built in such a way it looks like a female insect on a flower or leaf, and it gives off apheromone smell. Its lip is brownish, mostly with contrasting lines and spots, and its sepals are green or coloured like a flower.






See here the Bee Orchid (Ophrys apifera). This name is confusing, the word 'Bee Orchid' can refer to the genus Ophrys as well as to the species Bee Orchid. Here the species is meant. In Dordogne, this is the last-flowering Bee Orchid (genus). Now it is in full bloom. You see three pink sepals, and sitting on them, the 'insect' suggested by the lip, with left and right hairy protrusions for 'arms'. Two small petals stand for 'antennae' (even if they look more like little ears, but insects do not think the way we do). The green-yellow part in the midst of the flower is its gynostemium, the column incorporating stamen and style that is typical for Orchids.

The bud above is opening and the dark lip is already visible. The bud is upside-down and while opening it turns in the right sense.







Here a lateral view. The lip is ready to receive an insect in its arms. Two pollinia are visible, small clubs with yellow pollen on thin stalks. One is still hidden inside the gynostemium, the other already came out. At the basis of the clubs there is some glue, and when a bee lands on the lip and moves around the clubs glue themselves on the head of the insect. They are still there when the bee visits another Bee Orchid. When a pollinium turns towards the stigma of the same flower, also autofertilisation can happen.

Complicated but apparently it works.






In this meadow you can be happy!