But back to the orchids. In Australia, evolutionary biologist Rod Peakall spent more than thirty years studying the ways several groups of orchids convinced wasps to try to have sex with them. The point of this was to coat the wasps in their pollen. Which is to say, in order to have plant sex, the plant pantomimed wasp sex, and the wasp unwittingly had plant sex. The mechanics are a little complicated, but perhaps nothing else we know of shows just how intimately involved plants can get in other species’ lives. So we will try our best to imagine it.
