Professor Michael Fay
Appearances
Global News Podcast
Ukraine: 'Moscow bombs boarding school'
For thousands of years, orchids have had an association with seduction because they have all sorts of interesting mechanisms for getting themselves pollinated, many of which involve tricking the pollinators into thinking that they're seducing a female of their species, but it turns out they're actually pollinating an orchid.
Global News Podcast
Ukraine: 'Moscow bombs boarding school'
And some orchids are being used as aphrodisiacs, and so there's a whole range of different things where orchids are involved in some seduction in one way or another. Why Peru this year? The Andes and the countries around the Andes are remarkably rich in orchids. So the Orchid Festival focuses each year on a country which has a large number of orchid species.
Global News Podcast
Ukraine: 'Moscow bombs boarding school'
And Peru is one of those that we've been waiting to do because it's one which has approximately 3,000 species of orchids compared with the 50 native species that we have in the UK. So it's a remarkably rich one with orchids from high mountains down to sea levels.
Global News Podcast
Ukraine: 'Moscow bombs boarding school'
Well, about 60 years. Fair number of moons. Yes. They're enigmatic plants. They have very bizarre life histories. They're unpredictable, some of them where you can find them. I can remember where, for example, I saw my first bee orchid and who I was with when I saw it, and that was when I was about seven years old.
Global News Podcast
Ukraine: 'Moscow bombs boarding school'
Still to come... For thousands of years, orchids have had an association with seduction and some orchids have been used as aphrodisiacs.