The bee orchid’s lower petal is a passable impression of a female bee: furry, brown, striped, held out like a landing pad. Further south, in the Mediterranean, a male long-horned bee sometimes falls for it, tries to mate with the petal, and flies off wearing the pollen. In Britain that bee is rare, and the orchid has mostly stopped waiting. The stalks holding its pollen are weak, so after a while the pollen masses droop out on their own and swing onto the sticky part of the same flower. Darwin noticed this in 1860 and asked readers of a gardening paper to go and look for themselves. So every June, across chalk grassland and road verges where no suitor is coming, the orchid still puts on the whole costume, every stripe correct, and then quietly sees to things itself.