The Night Orchid Mystery at the New Britain Island

One of the largest volcanic island in the Bismarck Archipelago, called the New Britain Island in Papua New Guinea with a population of about 300 thousand local residents.

The island is separated by the Dampier Strait and the Strait Vitiaz of mainland Papua New Guinea with the majority of the surface of the islands covered by tropical rain forests, rivers and waterfalls among others, a fascinating land.

The island is attractive as a tourist destination with the availability of some exotic tourist resorts and luxury hotels, but the charm for tourists is when they wander through the forest and the river there and look for diving locations in Valinda or toward the "Cathedral" - the vast horseshoe reef with the big cave, the area for sea dives, an extended strip of white sand, coral reef gardens and external.

In addition to having the charm of wild nature as a tourist destination, the island became a destination object of research with a variety of plant and animal biodiversity, as is done by a scientist from the Netherlands, Ed ve Vogel. In his journey through the forest and adventure along the forest he found a new species of orchid.

The orchid named Bulbophyllum nocturnum, is the only one among the 25,000 species of orchids that have been described that blooms at night. Uniquely, the orchid's also only bloom overnight.

He was very surprised to see the behavior of the orchid that only blooms one night only, then looked blooming flower buds at 10 pm.

Long after the sun goes down, proving that it is a species of unknown type. Allegedly orchids were pollinated by animals such as mosquitoes and gnats that are active at night.

The number of flowers that bloom at night is relatively a few of its kind. Some examples are the queen of the night cactus and jasmine that blooms at night.

A unique fact on an island that still has an active volcano, adventure in the wild, along the rivers and probably will still find other unique facts.

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(Source dailymail /Images Mongabay, Rebecca)