Dendrobium sinense

The flowers of this orchid produce a bee pheromone which attracts its pollinator, Vespa bicolor, a species of hornet. The novel feature, first reported in 2009, is supposed to mimic the pheromones of honeybees, the Asian Apis cerana and European Apis mellifera honeybee, which is produced as a distress signal.

Dendrobium sinense grows on the Chinese island of Hainan, where hornets capture honeybees to serve as food for their larvae. It fools the hornets by producing a rare scent chemical, never before found in any plant, that honeybees use as an alarm signal. More