Open All Night Some plants attract a crowd. T e balsa tree is a good example. It grows in Central America. It’s a night bloomer. Its flowers smell like mushrooms. A parade of animals comes to visit it each night. A monkey comes and drinks
the nectar. T en it moves on. T e flowers refill with fresh nectar. T en a kinkajou visits. It drinks the nectar. T e flowers refill again. T e balsa tree is like an all night
café. It serves fresh nectar until morning. Opossums, bats, and katydids all come to drink. Many carry away pollen with them.
FUN FACTS
• Beetles pollinate 88% of all flowering plants.
• A hawk moth’s proboscis is longer than its body.
• Lemurs are the largest known pollinators.
• One nectar bat has a tongue so long that it curls inside its ribcage.
22 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC EXPLORER
Setting a Trap Some night flowers have strong smells. Others have strong petals. T e petals can’t be easily torn. T e Amazon water lily smells like
pineapple. It has strong petals that it uses to trap beetles. T e smell attracts the beetles. T ey crawl into the flower. T e petals close around them. T e beetles can’t escape. T e next night, the flower
reopens. When the beetles crawl out, they’re coated in pollen. T ey take this pollen to another lily.
Flower Mystery Scientists are still discovering new night flowers. Some of these flowers seem mysterious. T ere is one orchid that dies
during the day. Other orchids don’t do that. A scientist took one of these orchids home to study it. What he saw surprised him. T e orchid bloomed at night. He wonders what animal pollinates it. It might be tiny flies called midges. T e night may hide more flower
mysteries. T ere’s one thing we know for sure, though. As long as plants and animals help each other, flowers will grow.
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