Abstract
IX. Alpine Orchids adapted to Cross-fertilisation by Butterflies NO family of plants, as far as is known, offers more various adaptations of flowers to insects of different orders than the Orchids, which have called general attention to the relation between flowers and insects since the admirable description by Mr. Darwin.2 Of thirty-four species of Orchids found up to the present time in Westphalia, five3 have been observed to be fertilised by humble-bees, and partly also by other Apidæ two4 by humble-bees and Diptera; one5 by species of Andrena; one6 by Vespa; one7 by Apidæ, Diptera, and Sphegidæ; one8 principally by Ichneumonidæ; one9 exclusively by Diptera; two10 by minute insects of different orders; and four11 by Lepidoptera. Although the fertilisers of the sixteen remaining species12 have not yet been observed, still it may fairly be deduced from the structure of their flowers that none of them, except, perhaps, Habenaria viridis, is fertilised by butterflies. Of thirty-four species, then, growing in the plain and lower mountain region, four, or at the most five, that is to say 12 to 15 per cent., are fertilised by Lepidoptera; whereas of five species of Orchids growing in the higher Alpine region near the Ortler, three,13 or perhaps four,14 that is to say 60 to 80 per cent, are adapted to cross-fertilisation by butterflies, a proportion which strongly corroborates my view that the predominant frequency of butterflies in the Alpine region must have influenced the adaptations of Alpine flowers. As two of these five species of Alpine Orchids are not mentioned in Mr. Darwin's classical work, nor have yet been described with regard to their contrivances for fertilisation, I will give here a brief account of them.
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MÜLLER, H. Fertilisation of Flowers by Insects 1 . Nature 11, 169–171 (1874). https://doi.org/10.1038/011169b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/011169b0