"Despite extensive efforts, nobody had ever definitively documented the pollination of the ghost orchid, a mysterious plant that grows in the towering trees of the Everglades—until now."
"The ghost orchid is one of the rarest and most mysterious flowers in North America. Until recently, scientists could only guess at how the 2,000 or so plants that cling to the trees in Florida’s remote old-growth swamp forests are pollinated—no one had ever photographed the event before.
The ethereal flowers thrive in difficult-to-access, flooded forests and are only pollinated at night by, it’s long been assumed, a moth. The giant sphinx moth, with a proboscis long enough to reach deep into the flower’s nectar tube, was a prime suspect.
Photographer Mac Stone became captivated by this enigma after friends took him deep into a Florida swamp to a secret glade teeming with hundreds of dangling ghost orchids. In the summer of 2018, he put his climbing skills and technical prowess to use to help finally solve it. Stone enlisted Peter Houlihan, a conservation scientist from the Florida Museum of Natural History who had spent more than five frustrating years trying to catch a giant sphinx moth in the act. For months the two men climbed a tree in the Audubon Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary that hosts a ghost orchid, setting a camera trap, waiting diligently."
Jillian Mock reports for Audubon Magazine Summer 2019 issue.
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