Fertilisation of Orchids - Botany As Recreation

Botany As Recreation

After On the Origin of Species was published, Darwin became involved in producing revised editions as well as working on Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication as the first part of his planned "Big Book". By the spring of 1860 he had tired of the grind of writing, and needed something fresh and interesting to study. During a family visit to relatives at Hartfield, he was searching for orchids when he noticed a sundew. He collected it and tried to feed it insects, thus beginning a long-term study of insectivorous plants. He investigated other botanical questions raised by his ideas of natural selection, including the advantages of sexual dimorphism in primulas, and the adaptive mechanisms that ensure cross-pollination in orchids. As an enthusiastic practical scientist, such investigations gave him a strong sense of personal enjoyment. He relished pitting his wits against nature, and following lucky hunches. His theory was a way of looking at the world, enabling him to find creative solutions to problems that traditional approaches could not solve. He later wrote, "I am like a gambler, & love a wild experiment."

Around the end of April 1860, Darwin discussed insect pollination with his friend Joseph Dalton Hooker, and mentioned the bee orchid. Darwin corresponded with Hooker's assistant Daniel Oliver, the senior curator at Kew Gardens, who became a follower of Darwin's ideas. At the start of June, Darwin wrote to The Gardeners' Chronicle asking for readers' observations on how bee or fly orchids were fertilised. His letter described the mechanisms for insect fertilisation he had discovered in common British orchids, and reported his experimental observations that pollen masses were removed from Orchis morio and Orchis mascula plants in the open, but left in their pouches in adjacent plants under a glass bell jar. He wrote to American botanist Asa Gray that he had been "so struck with admiration at the contrivances, that I have sent notice to Gardeners Chronicle", and made similar enquiries of other experts.

Darwin became engrossed in meticulous microscopic examination, tracing the complicated mechanisms of flowers that attracted insects by their nectar so that the insects transported pollen to cross-pollinate other plants, and on 19 July he told Hooker, "I am intensely interested on subject, just as at a game of chess." In September, he "dissected with the greatest interest" and wrote, "The contrivances for insect fertilisation in Orchids are multiform & truly wonderful & beautiful." By October, he had "a large mass of notes with many new facts", but set them aside "convinced that I ought to work on Variation & not amuse myself with interludes".