The world of the orchid

Generations of botanists and florists seduced by the orchid's natural beauty have long known there is something special about the "supermodel of the plant world". Now, the history of the floral pin-up will need to be re-written; a new discovery suggests that orchids bloomed when dinosaurs roamed the earth ? far earlier than previously thought. A team of American scientists in the Dominican Republic found, perfectly preserved in a lump of amber, grains of orchid pollen attached to the wings of a 20-million-year-old bee. Until now, plant historians were forced to rely on scant fossil records to chart the origins of the plant, but the new find, detailed last month in the science journal Nature, suggests that orchids arose as long as 85 million years ago.