Orchid Pollination — Design, Not Evolution

We have had some heavy-duty material here lately, this piece of light reading may be a nice change of pace.

Aside from hybridization and other forms of artificial selection, thousands of orchid species exist in nature. I'll allow that I'm tempted to assign human characteristics to some of them, such as conniving, deceptive, ingenious, and others because of their amazing abilities to get themselves pollinated. They look nice, too.

Credit: Morguefile / Moonlightway

Most of us know that one of the most important ways for flowers to get pollinated is to let insects — especially bees — do the job. Some orchids mimic insects to attract them, as well as giving a fragrance that appeals to them. There are even a few varieties that have a kind of "catch and release" program for bees — the Bucket Orchid even produces a liquid that makes the male bee attractive to female bees! Other orchids mimic insects to get the attention of other insects.

Darwin's disciples cannot explain the mimicry and symbiosis involved, so they appeal to the secular miracle of "convergent evolution", which is a non-explanation. So many things must be in place from the beginning or the pollination process is ineffective. The logical conclusion is that the Creator is demonstrating his abilities to use specified complexity yet again.

There is no evidence whatsoever that flowering plants evolved. Charles Darwin himself once commented: ‘Nothing is more extraordinary in the history of the vegetable kingdom, as it seems to me, than the apparently very sudden and abrupt development of the higher plants.’ The orchid family is one of the largest plant families, with about 30,000 species. Orchids come in many shapes and sizes, the best known probably being the insect–mimicking species. Many of these mimics have very ingenious ways of attracting pollinating insects, appealing to the senses of both sight and smell. Can evolution explain the origin of these mechanisms?

For the rest of this short article, click on "Orchids … a witness to the Creator". You may also like a related article about the Greenhood Orchid makes an insect think romance is in the air, "The Love Trap".