The beautiful tricks of flowers Jonathan Drori

do you know how many species of

flowering plants there are there are

quarter of a million at least those are

the ones we know about quarter of a

million species of flowering plants and

flowers are a real bugger they’re pretty

difficult for plants to produce they

take an enormous amount of energy and a

lot of resources why would they go to

that bother and the answer of course

like so many things in the world is sex

I know what’s on your mind when you’re

looking at these pictures and the reason

that sexual reproduction is so important

there are lots of other things that

plants can do to reproduce you can take

cuttings they can they can sort of have

sex with themselves they can pollinate

themselves but they really need to

spread their genes to mix with other

genes so they can adapt to environmental

niches evolution works that way now the

way that plants transmit that

information is through pollen some of

you may have seen some of these pictures

before as I say every home should have a

scanning electron microscope you’ll be

able to see these and there is many

different kinds of pollen as there are

flowering plants and that’s actually

rather useful for forensics and so on

most pollen that causes hay fever for us

is from plants that use the wind to

disseminate the pollen and that’s a very

inefficient process which is why it gets

up our noses so much because you have to

check out masses and masses of it hoping

that your sex cells your male sex cells

which are held within the pollen will

somehow reach another flower just by

chance right so all the grasses which

means all the cereal crops and most of

the trees have wind-borne pollen but

most species actually use insects to do

their bidding and that’s more

intelligent in a way and because the

pollen they don’t need too much of it

the insects and and and other species

can take the pollen transfer it directly

to where it’s required so we’re aware

obviously of the relationship between

insects and plants there’s a symbiotic

relationship there whether it’s flies or

birds or bees they’re getting something

in return and that thing in return is

generally nectar

sometimes that symbiosis has led to

wonderful adaptations the hummingbird

hawkmoth is beautiful in its adaptation

the plant gets something and the hawk

moth spreads the pollen somewhere else

plants have evolved to create little

landing strips here and there for bees

that might have lost their way there are

markings on many plants that look like

other insects these are the anthers of a

lily cleverly done so that when the the

unsuspecting insect sort of lands on it

the anther flips up and wops it on the

back with a great load of pollen that it

learn goes to another plant with is an

orchid that so it might look to you as

if it’s got jaws and in a way it has it

forces the insect to crawl out getting

covered in in pollen that it takes

somewhere else orchids there are 20,000

at least species of orchids amazingly

amazingly diverse and they get up to all

sorts of tricks to try and attract

pollinators to do their bidding this

orchid known as Darwin’s orchid because

it’s one that he he studied and made a

wonderful prediction when he saw it you

can see that there’s a very long nectar

tube that sort of descends down from the

from the orchid and basically what the

insect has to do in the middle of the

flower has to stick its little proboscis

right into the middle of that and all

the way down that nectar tube to get to

the nectar and Darwin said looking at

this flower I guess something has come

evolved with this and sure enough

there’s there’s the insect and I mean

normally it kind of rolls it away but in

its erect form that’s what it looks like

now you can imagine that if nectar is

such a valuable a valuable thing and

expensive for the plant to produce and

it attracts lots of pollinators then

just as in sort of human sex people

might start to deceive they might say

I’ve got a bit of nectar do you want to

come and get it now this is a plant

this is a plant here that insects say in

South Africa just just love and they’ve

evolved with a long proboscis to get the

nectar at the bottom and this is the

mimic so this is a plant that is

mimicking the first plant and here is

the long proboscis fly that has not got

any nectar from the mimic because the

the mimic doesn’t give it any natural

thought it would get some so not only as

the fly not got the the nectar from the

mimic plant it’s also if you look very

closely at the just at this sort of head

end you can see that it’s got a bit of

pollen but it would be transmitting to

another plant if only some botanist

hadn’t come along and stuck it to a blue

piece of card now deceit

carries on through the the plant kingdom

this flower with its black dots and they

might look like black dots to us but I

tell you to a to a male insect of the

right species that looks like two

females who are really really hot to

trot and when the insect gets there and

lands on it dosing itself in pollen of

course that it’s going to take to

another plant if you look at the every

home should have one scanning electron

microscope picture you can see that

there are actually some patterning there

which is three-dimensional so it

probably even feels good for the insect

as well as looking good and these

electron microscope pictures here’s one

of an orchid mimicking an insect you can

see that different parts of the

structure have different colors and

different textures to our I have very

very different textures to of an insect

might perceive and this one is evolved

to mimic a sort of glossy metallic

surface on that you see on some beetles

and under the scanning electron

microscope you can you can see the the

surface they’re really quite different

from the other surfaces we looked at

sometimes the whole plant mimics an

insect even to us I mean I think that

looks like some sort of flying animal or

beast as it’s a wonderful amazing thing

this one’s so clever it’s called

obsidian I think of it as insidious

sometimes so the right species of bee

this looks like

another very aggressive bee and it gave

him box it on the head lots and lots of

times to try and drive it away and of

course covered itself with pollen the

other thing it does is that this plant

mimics another orchid that has a

wonderful store of food for insects only

this one doesn’t have anything for them

so it’s deceiving on two levels fabulous

and here we see Alang Alang the

component of many perfumes actually

smelts along with someone earlier and

the flowers don’t really have to be that

gaudy there they’re sending out

fantastic array of scent to any insect

that will have it this one doesn’t smell

so good this is a flower that really

really smells pretty nasty

and is designed again evolved to look

like carrion and so flies flies love

this they fly in and they they pollinate

and this which is a hillock o dis Arras

as is also known as dead horse Arum I

don’t know what a dead horse actually

smells like but this one probably smells

pretty much like it’s for a really

horrible and blowflies just can’t help

themselves they fly into this thing and

they fly all the way down it they lay

their eggs in it thinking it’s a nice

bit of carrion and not realizing there’s

no food for the eggs the eggs are going

to die but the plant meanwhile has

benefited because the bristles release

and the the flies disappear off to

pollinate the next flower fantastic

here’s Erin Erin maculatum lords and

ladies or cuckoo pint in this country

photograph this last weekend in Dorset

this thing heats up by about 15 degrees

above ambient temperature amazing and if

you look down into it this is sort of

down past the spadix

the Flies get attracted by the heat

which is boiling off volatile chemicals

at little midges and they get trapped

underneath in this container they drink

this fabulous nectar and then they’re

all bit sticky at night they get covered

in pollen right rich sort of showers

down over them and then the bristles

that we saw above they sort of wilt and

allow all these midges out cover

in Poland fabulous thing now if you

think that’s fabulous this is one of my

great favorites this is the philodendron

saloon okay anyone here from Brazil

you’ll you’ll know about this plant this

is the most amazing thing that sort of

phallic bit there is about a foot long

okay

and it does something that no other

plant that I know of does and that is

that when it flowers that’s the the

spadix in the middle there for a period

of about two days it metabolizes in a

way which is rather similar to mammals

right so instead of having starch which

is the sort of food of plants it takes

something rather similar to brown fat

and burns it at such a rate that is

burning fat metabolizing the about the

rate of a small cat okay that’s you and

that’s twice the energy output weight

for weight than a hummingbird

absolutely astonishing this thing does

something else which is unusual not only

will it raise itself to 115 Fahrenheit

43 or 44 degrees centigrade for two days

but it keeps constant temperature

there’s a thermo regulation mechanism in

there that keeps constant temperature

now why does it do this I hear you ask

now wouldn’t you know it there’s are

some beetles that just love to make love

at that temperature and they get inside

and they get it all on and and the plant

showers them with pollen and off they go

and pollinate and what a wonderful thing

it is now most pollinators that we we

think about are insects but actually in

the tropics many birds and butterflies

pollinate and many of the tropical

flowers are red and that’s because

butterflies and birds see similarly to

us we think and can see the color red

very well alright but if you look at the

spectrum and birds and and us we see red

green and blue and see that spectrum

insects see green blue and ultraviolet

and they see various shades of

ultraviolet so there’s something that

goes on off the end there and wouldn’t

it be great if we could somehow see what

that is I hear you ask well yes we can

so what is an insect seeing last week I

took these pictures of

Rock Rose Healy anthem um in Dorset

these are little yellow flowers like we

all see little yellow flowers all over

the place and this is what it looks like

with visible light this is what it looks

like if you take out the red most bees

don’t perceive red okay and then I put

some ultraviolet filters on my camera

and took a very very long exposure with

the particular frequencies of

ultraviolet light and this is what I got

right and that’s a real fantastic bull’s

eye right now we don’t know exactly what

a bee sees because you know any more

than you know what I’m saying when I

call this red right you you know we

can’t know what’s going on and let alone

an insect another human being mind but

the contrast will look something like

that

okay so you know it’s standing out a lot

from the background there’s another

little flower a different range of

ultraviolet frequencies different

different filters to match the

pollinators and that’s the sort of thing

that it would be seeing just in case you

think that all yellow flowers have this

property no no flowers damaged in the

process of this shot it’s just when you

know attached to the tripod not not

killed then under ultraviolet light look

at that and that could be the basis of a

sunscreen because sunscreens work by

absorbing ultraviolet light so maybe the

chemical in that would be useful

finally there’s there’s one of evening

primrose that beyond was lit from Norway

sent me fantastic hidden patent and I

love the idea of something hidden I

think there’s something sort of poetic

here that these pictures taken with

ultraviolet filter the main use of that

filter is for astronomers to take

pictures of Venus actually the clouds of

Venus right that’s the main use of that

filter Venus of course is the God of

love and fertility which is the the

flower story and just as flowers spend a

lot of effort and trying to get

pollinators to do their bidding

they’ve also somehow managed to persuade

us to plant great fields full of them

and give them to each other at times of

birth and death

and particularly at marriage which when

you think of it is the moment that it

sort of encapsulates the the sub

transfer of genetic material from one

organism to another thank you very much