I can find no evidence, in the published literature, that Edith’s work on pseudocopulation was in any way disregarded or dismissed because she was a woman, a colonial or an amateur. Her work might initially have been viewed with some scepticism, but it was assessed on its merits, subjected to rigorous scrutiny and accepted. Scientists have a way of letting you know, in their writing, if they are not overly impressed with someone’s work. There is no hint of that in the pseudocopulation literature.
That’s not to say that science isn’t sexist or subject to snobbery. Science is as much a reflection of society as any other occupation. But I wonder how much that battle takes place, not so much in the intellectual spaces of the scientific journals, but in the halls of academia. Edith was not competing for space, resources or position at the University of Melbourne. She was only competing for ideas – no money and only a little prestige in a rather obscure field of botany. Perhaps she picked her battleground wisely.
Spring is late this year, delayed by gales and flooding rain. By mid-September the paulownia tree is usually wreathed a haze of purple-blue and bees, but this year the hairy buds sit tight-closed against biting winds. The gales blew down several electricity pylons up the coast, blacking out the state for days. Roads were washed away, not just an edge or soft shoulder, but an entire creek redirected down a gouged gully that was previously smooth black tarmac, plates of asphalt lifted, tipped and relocated. Sheets of mud slid uninvited down hills, through back doors, into kitchens and lounge rooms.
But the seasons turn with determined regularity and the sun has finally forced its way through the clouds. The rain is good for the orchids. Nodding greenhoods (Pterostylis nutans) shelter under trees, umbrellaed from the weather. Dark maroon ‘bulldogs’ (Diuris orientis) replace the more common yellow donkey orchids (Diuris pardina) which normally predominate. Swathes of lilac waxlips (Glossodia major) cover the hillside, their white labellum offering bright yellow stamens to passing pollinators. Starry clusters of milkmaids (Burchardia umbellata), members of the lilaeacea family, are profligate with their underappreciated charms.
And the spider orchids have appeared in their hundreds, in places I’ve never seen them before. We find just a few king spider orchids each season – Caladenia tentaculata, aptly reclassified as Arachnorchis. But this year they seem to have appeared everywhere. It takes a while to get your ‘orchid eye’ in. I spot one, thrilled, then see a cluster. Dropping to the ground, I look up the hillside at a swathe, a delicate translucent cloak of spiky white, green and purple swaying a foot above the ground. There are hundreds of them.
A few lie broken in the wet grass, pruned by weather, branch or passing kangaroo. I pick them up to study more closely and take them home to draw. An early blowfly buzzes around my head. I shake my head but it returns, persistent with a heavy drone. Bigger than a blowfly. Some kind of beetle? I wave my free hand, keeping the orchids steady, but the insect won’t leave. It’s unusually persistent.
I hold the orchids away from me and a large striped wasp circles in. Then another and another. They mill around then dive, simultaneously, tackling the delicate orchids like a team of rugby players. The thin stems of the orchids shiver beneath the wasps’ weight. Lumps of golden pollen cling to their bodies, they curve their abdomens around the orchids’ labellum, first one then the other, before abandoning them: a bombing squadron that disappears as quickly as it arrived. Teams of wasps reappear periodically on the walk home, repeating their bombardment, hounding me all the way up the hill as if protesting the theft of their property.
In twenty years of observing orchids, I have never witnessed pseudocopulation before, only read about it. And it is every bit as strange and astonishing to observe as it must have been when Edith first saw it, in that summer of 1926.
Wasps and orchids: A remarkable partnership
By E. C
.
Instances of Nature’s wonderful partnerships in the plant and animal worlds are not at all uncommon, but recent discoveries have disclosed a singular alliance between an orchid and a certain wasp which is so strange as to appear incredible. The purpose of the partnership has so far baffled experts both in orchidology and entomology.
One learns to be surprised at little in Nature’s realm, and, though many of her ways are inscrutable, we accept them without question. Some of the means she adopts to achieve her ends are altogether beyond our ken, and none are more marvellous than her modifications and adaptations to ensure reproduction in plants and animals. Having satisfied herself that cross-pollination would add vigor to many of her plants, she set about teaching them wonderful lessons in adaptability, modifying their structure to suit the transport of pollen. The square peg was, metaphorically speaking, made to fit the round hole, and in certain plants we can follow many singular evolutions as they adapt themselves to pressing needs or changed conditions.
Flowers have endless contrivances by which insects are invited, often compelled to carry out this work of cross-pollination, and among the orchids we find some of the most remarkable of these – many so wonderful as to appear incredible and others so strangely beautiful as to compel our instant admiration.
Of the many interesting partnerships in the plant world there are some that might well be cited as object lessons in co-operation, in which the articles of association are rigidly adhered to, and where the benefit of each member is assured. In some old-established co-operations between plants and fungi both
