Ward’s Stanhopea blooms in late summer to early autumn. The inflorescence generally produces eight to ten flowers. The shocking thing about Stanhopea is the position of the inflorescence. It grows down; most often straight through the medium emerging from the bottom of the basket.

The waxy flowers are pale to bright yellow with reddish freckles and eyespots on the hypochile (the base of the labellum or lip petal). And each flower only lasts for a couple of days. The flowers are pollinated by male euglossine bees. But the colorfully metallic bees do not visit to collect pollen nor do they come to drink nectar. They come for the fragrance.

Ward’s Stanhopea produces a spicy, chocolate or, some say, medicinal aroma. And the male bees move over the surfaces of the labellum and column to collect the fragrant oils. The bees are so engrossed in oil collecting that they probably never notice when the orchid glues its pollinia to the bee’s back. The male bee will carry the packet of pollen to the next flower he visits where, once again, totally fixated on oil collecting he will pollinate the flower.

The euglossine bee stores the oil in specialized pouchs in his hind legs. One day, he will dandy himself up and go courting. And the female euglossine bee is picky. Her beau must smell exactly right to get her attention.

 

(Compiled from: “Pollination by Euglossine Bees”, Robert L. Dressler, Evolution, Vol. 22, No. 1 (Mar., 1968); “Stanhopea wardii”, Nina Rach, The Stanhopea Pages, May 2007; and “Stanhopea”, Orchids: Their Botany and Culture, Alex D. Hawkes, Harper and Row, Publishers, New York, Evanston, and London, 1961)