Go Inside the Gorgeous Orchid Show at the New York Botanical Garden

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The orchid’s pollination habits—they only specialized reproductive parts and only one pollen mass/one chance at “procreation”—fascinate researchers. “There are orchids that do such bizarre things as mimic the female of a species of bee and trick the males into mating with the flowers to get them to pollinate them,” said Hachadourian. “It’s like they push the edge of science, almost to science fiction.”

Photo: Sarah Balch