IN nature there are many well-known instances of animals pretending to be plants, usually in an effort to camouflage themselves and avoid being seen.

Chameleons colour themselves green to stalk their victims undetected in the trees, while stick insects and leaf insects hide among the foliage in an effort to avoid becoming those victims.

Flat periwinkles do the same on the Yorkshire seashore by looking just like the "poppers" on the bladder wrack seaweed that is their home.

Far less common are plants that deliberately try to look like animals. We have two in Ryedale that are both in flower at the moment; they are the bee orchid and the fly orchid. No prizes for guessing what animals they resemble.

It's not a case of camouflage this time, quite the opposite in fact, because the plants are actually trying to be seen. They are attempting to attract male bees, in the case of the bee orchid, and wasps for the fly orchid.

Such is the scale of the deception that not only do they look like the female of the species concerned but the plants also produce chemicals which mimic the insects sex hormones, so they smell alluring as well.

The trick doesn't even stop when the male bee or wasp lands, because the flowers are also designed to feel right. Fly orchid flowers have a smooth, shiny patch resembling a wasp's wings and, because bees bodies are hairy, so are bee orchid flowers – fiendishly clever.

This is where the story starts to get a little saucy. So convinced is the male insect that he has landed on a female of his own species that he attempts to mate with the flower. His physical exertions dislodge a pair of pollen sacs linked by a thin thread which fall over the back of his head like a yellow scarf and are secured in place by a dab of quick-drying glue.

Sooner or later he realises that he has been duped and flies away only to fall for the same femme fatale trick again later. This time, a sticky patch on the orchid flower collects the previous flowers’s pollen sacs from around his neck, which will then be used to fertilise the orchid’s developing seeds – even more fiendishly clever.

Just before you rush off to witness this bizarre pseudo-copulation (that is the proper botanical term for kinky bee behaviour) I have some disappointing news.

Bee and fly orchids are Mediterranean species at the extreme northern limits of their range in Ryedale. They can just about survive our climate but their longhorn bee and digger wasp pollinator species can't, so the elaborate process that these beautiful flowers were specifically designed to perform never actually happens in Yorkshire.

This begs the obvious question of how these orchids manage to fertilise their seeds at all? The sad answer is that they have to do it to themselves. Orchids are hermaphrodites so, in the absence of amorous insects, the male pollen sacs drop onto the plants own female stigma allowing self-pollination to take place. Inbreeding is a risk but any breeding is better than none at all.

If you would like to see these exotic looking plants in the wild then search in dry limestone or chalk grassland, their habitats of choice.

Ellerburn Banks Nature Reserve on the edge of Dalby Forest is a good site as are the disused quarries at Wharram and Spaunton, but these plants can turn up in any undisturbed suitable habitat. I found a bee orchid on a day by the seaside at Upgang Ravine near Whitby.