每日一花

A complete botanical profile of the Bee Orchid: a Mediterranean species whose labellum so accurately mimics a female bee — in both appearance and chemical pheromone signature — that male bees attempt to mate with it. In Britain, where the bee partner is absent, the plant simply self-pollinates instead.

A complete botanical profile of the Sensitive Plant: a tropical Brazilian species whose leaves snap shut within a second of being touched, driven by the same electrochemical logic as animal nerve impulses. What sets it apart is a 2014 experiment showing the plant can habituate — learn to stop responding to a harmless stimulus — and retain that memory for at least 28 days, despite having no neurons.

A complete botanical profile of the world's smallest water lily: a Rwandan species with 2 cm pads and 1 cm flowers, whose entire wild habitat — a single geothermal hot spring — was diverted for irrigation in the 2000s, rendering it extinct in the wild. Saved from total extinction by a Kew Gardens horticulturalist who worked out that the plants need warm soil at the roots, not warm surface water.