How do you spread your genes around when you’re stuck in place? You get really, really good at things like biochemistry, at engineering, design, and color, and at the art of manipulating the “higher” creatures, up to and including animals like us. I’m thinking specifically of one of the largest, most diverse families of flowering plants: the 25,000 species of orchids that, over the past 80 million years or so, have managed to colonize six continents and virtually every conceivable habitat.