the flower's female organ that receives pollen. Despite its fame as one of Japan's iconic orchids, the function of this structure has remained a mystery—until now. The Kobe University botanist ...

While scentless by day, the orchid flower becomes fragrant at night ... downward and are shaped to fit the pollinator's facial structure. Hint: This beakless pollinator uses its tongue to probe ...

set up pollination experiments in the laboratory and tracked changes in the orchid’s flower structure with fluorescence microscopy. They noticed that if no insects visited the orchid to ...

The diminutive orchid Stigmatodactylus sikokianus ... Kobe University botanist SUETSUGU Kenji has discovered that this structure enables the plant to self-pollinate when insects fail to transfer ...