Cattleya Orchid and Three Hummingbirds 1870s. The NGA describes the work: "Lichen covers dead branches; moss drips from trees; and, a blue-gray mist veils the distant jungle. An opulent pink orchid with light-green stems and pods dominates the left foreground." On the right, two green-and-pink Brazilian Amethysts hover about a nest while a red-tailed Sappho Comet perches nearby. Cattleya Orchid and Three Hummingbirds Cattleya Orchid and Three Hummingbirds (1871) is an oil on mahogany panel picture by Martin Johnson Heade acquired by the National Gallery of Art in 1982. Inspired perhaps by the works of Charles Darwin and Frederic Edwin Church, Heade planned to produce
Flower constancy food resources and so will feed on a mixture of these to maximize their energy intake per unit time. As a result of this apparent contradiction, many hypotheses have been proposed to explain flower constancy in insects to determine the adaptability of flower constancy. One of the most popular explanations is that insects that are flower constant have limited memory space and can only focus on one flower type at a time. Insects, as with other animals, have short-term memory (STM) or "working memory" where information is stored temporarily for a few second or minutes. Additionally, insects have long-term memory