Orchid help needed for Miss Marple (UK TV show)

[littlefrog]

Nobody brushes pollen onto anything in orchids... Orchid pollen comes as (mostly) solid packages called pollinia. Normal process if your character was going to hybridize any orchid that you can actually see the flowers on:

1. Remove pollen mass from one orchid flower with a toothpick.

2. Carry toothpick over to another flower.

3. Mash pollen onto stigma of said flower.

Any of that would probably fail to be conveyed in anything but extreme closeup, which you aren't likely to do. But you'll impress your orchid growing audience if you show the character with a toothpick...

Now, there may be sighing - I routinely wonder what the heck I'm doing when I'm wandering around pollinating a dozen orchids. Mainly because I know at some point I'm going to have to flask all that seed.


Snake orchid? There is a small temperate terrestrial called rattlesnake orchid... Doesn't look like a snake though. I think the inflorescence on a Bulbophyllum maximum looks a bit like a snake (or any in that group of Bulbophyllum, I think they are classed megaclinium now?). I can't honestly think of any orchid I've seen (and I've seen a lot) that screamed 'snake'. You could easily rewrite the script to look at a butterfly orchid (Psychopsis papilio), which you can actually find and actually looks remarkably like a butterfly...

Personally I think you should include a stinky dead elephant orchid (Bulbophyllum phalaenopsis, or maybe Bulbophyllum echinolabium), it is a murder mystery, after all.