My Year of Orchids: Orchid pheromones

There’s a huge amount written about the way orchid flowers produce pheromones. And all this writing and research is focused on the way orchids “fool” pollinators into visiting them, and doing the orchids’ reproductive behest. But wow. Not a word seems to have been written about the other universe of orchid pheromones.

I first suspected that my orchids were using aromas to attract other organisms when I saw an ant marching back and forth on the unopened bud of Acampe papillosa, a good three weeks before the flower opened. That ant sensed something and was there for a reason. How could a human tell what that was?

Eventually Acampe papillosa opened her flowers and as tiny as they were, they were mesmerizing. That is they hypnotized me, her human steward-slash-slave. I came back again and again asking myself. What is this aroma doing to my brain? I hadn’t figured it out more than a month later, when the sixth or seventh flower petered out. But I did notice that the capsule where the flowers had attached was swollen, probably with growing seeds. Something had been accomplished.

Here’s another little piece of the puzzle. Several times a week when I mist my slatted baskets I disturb a certain moth that’s been sitting there. You’ll think I’m weird but the moth looks like a tiny miniature chicken hatching her eggs. Don’t know what the moths are doing there, it’s always this same small dusky species. But I do know that moths are very strongly influenced by pheromones. It is central to their reproductive process. In my case they’re not pollinating the orchids because there aren’t any flowers, or haven’t been. But the moths have come to visit and “nest” because I assume, something is attracting them.

I’ve been thinking a lot about orchids and their many partnerships. Fungi, insects, other plants. All kinds of organisms are attracted to orchids and help them develop a thrumming ecosystem of success. Thing is, we humans don’t pick up the trail.

Is it any surprise? Think about the sounds a dog can hear, way out of our range. Or picture truffles and trained pigs. The truffles in the ground produce an aroma no human can trace. Why can’t Orchids produce molecules that we don’t sense with our limited olfactory senses?

So I did a little sniffing experiment and went around to the different orchids I could reach. Acampe papillosa, her flowers long gone, did produce a fragrance at once subtle, indescribable, and mystifying. Must go back for more. Almost scary was the odor of Maxillaria arachnitiflora, who hasn’t been feeling her best. The past week or so she began to develop yellowing leaves and since then she’s shed a few. The process seems to have been halted but her smell! Do you know the smell of steamed kasha (buckwheat groats)? That’s the best I can do to describe it but with deeper base notes, ketones perhaps, and a heady finish that has me coming back for more.

Whatever she’s doing, Maxillaria is sending a message. Not sure to whom or for what, but I imagine I’ll find out.