Orchid

The plants can produce male or female flowers (and occasionally hermaphrodite ones). It's often reported that higher light levels encourage female flowers, (which yours appear to be but, without a closer look I wouldn't swear to it) There doesn't seem to be any real agreement on this though, with some growers saying that temperature changes had caused male and female flowers on the same spike. Up close you'll see that male flowers have two curly appendages (one sometimes less visible) that act as a trigger when touched. The speed for one species was measured at faster than a pit viper strike! The male Euglossine bees that get caught up in these fly by shootings are knocked sideways by the force and learn not to revisit male flowers, which saves the orchid from wasting pollinia! There's a neat little video of the pollinia firing here: http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=1067896677975 but the best sequence I've seen is on the BBC's classic Private Life of Plants (every home should have one!!), which actually shows one of the bees getting it in slow mo.

Wow! You are lucky indeed. These flowers seem to be the same sex. Do you know if they are male or female? The explosive pollinia on the males are amazing!

I look forward to seeing more of your orchids. I'm okay at orchid ID but we have some great experts on Noah, including one from Costa Rica - Jonathan Sequeira.

Thanks for the info. You're so lucky to have these unique orchids growing on your property. Do you have many more orchids on your property? I look forward to more spottings. Welcome to Project Noah.

Catasetums are such weird looking orchids. Was this in the wild?