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THE SECRET LOVES OF FLOWERS Dino J. Martins I’m kneeling quietly, staying as still as possible, before a mass of luxuriant white flowers at the edge of a gorge in a distant, hidden corner in the highlands of Kenya. It is 5.45 a.m. Sunrise is still some thirty-seven minutes away. The eastern edges of the horizon are laced with saffron and drunken crickets rasp intermittently. Larks and robin-chats start warming up and in the distance is the forlorn, territorial sawing of a lonely leopard. A furtive and whirring sighing rustles through the cool, crisp air. Swiftly it moves amid the shadows, more heard than seen, a blurred suggestion of form in the blue-grey stillness before dawn.Then ever so stealthily, with proboscis unfurled, she probes the heart of her unsuspecting, but patient, evolutionary match and is rewarded with a millilitre’s measure of nectar. A cute floral nod and it’s all over. Millions of years of evolution reduced to just a millisecond of mutual pleasure and benefit. And like all naturalists who have borne witness to nature’s myriad mysteries many times before, I have come to learn and have been blessed with a small discovery. For the past ten years, I have been studying the intimate interactions between hawkmoths and the flowers they pollinate. Hawkmoths, also known as sphinx moths, are an intriguing and 
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dino j. martins incredible group of insects. They are fast-flying, long-lived and feed actively from many different kinds of flowers, a fair number of which they alone can pollinate. Despite their relatively high diversity, little is known about their actual role as pollinators and in particular as specialised pollinators of highly adapted plants, though it is widely estimated that about 10 per cent of all tropical flowering plant species are pollinated by hawkmoths. Among naturalists, they are known as the quintessential phantoms of the dusk because they emerge, to approach flowers, just as darkness gathers. After hundreds of hours spent waiting to see them, and many thousands of fleeting glimpses of these enigmatic creatures, I’ve learned to avoid looking for them on cold or misty mornings, to stay still, to move slowly and to watch very, very closely, as their flower feeds can last less than a few seconds. I grew up in Eldoret, a small, sleepy and rural town in western Kenya, and some of my earliest memories are of watching insects. As a child who suffered from the trauma of a broken home, I found refuge in nature. Later on, my love of insects connected me with the most wonderful foster parents who had come to Eldoret to help establish a new teaching hospital and training programme for Kenyan doctors. Along the way, our lives came together. My foster mother always says we ‘met through a moth’. I had been raising giant moths, which all hatched out and fluttered about the day she first visited me at home. Caring for the caterpillars had provided many hours of joy, and had kept me focused and away from thinking too much about what was happening at home, and when they hatched, we were both enchanted. My late mother, my foster parents and many wonderful teachers encouraged, nurtured and indulged my love of natural history, and after finishing school, I won a scholarship to Indiana University. Routine class and campus life, however, was not my cup of tea, but – thanks to some sympathetic professors – I was able to spend time in the Amazon rainforest and the wilds of Kenya, working on independent study and earning a degree in anthropology and biology. 

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THE SECRET LOVES

OF FLOWERS

Dino J. Martins

I’m kneeling quietly, staying as still as possible, before a mass of luxuriant white flowers at the edge of a gorge in a distant, hidden corner in the highlands of Kenya. It is 5.45 a.m. Sunrise is still some thirty-seven minutes away. The eastern edges of the horizon are laced with saffron and drunken crickets rasp intermittently. Larks and robin-chats start warming up and in the distance is the forlorn, territorial sawing of a lonely leopard.

A furtive and whirring sighing rustles through the cool, crisp air. Swiftly it moves amid the shadows, more heard than seen, a blurred suggestion of form in the blue-grey stillness before dawn.Then ever so stealthily, with proboscis unfurled, she probes the heart of her unsuspecting, but patient, evolutionary match and is rewarded with a millilitre’s measure of nectar. A cute floral nod and it’s all over. Millions of years of evolution reduced to just a millisecond of mutual pleasure and benefit.

And like all naturalists who have borne witness to nature’s myriad mysteries many times before, I have come to learn and have been blessed with a small discovery.

For the past ten years, I have been studying the intimate interactions between hawkmoths and the flowers they pollinate. Hawkmoths, also known as sphinx moths, are an intriguing and



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