A tale of males and females.

It's cold and windy outside and I'm feeling under the weather. So, today an indoor blip of two items from warmer climes.

This orchid flower, from the reduced counter at our local Tesco, is sitting in another marvel of nature - the shell of an Argonaut, a little, muscular, pelagic octopus. They look good together, but the link goes deeper still, one being associated with maleness, the other with femaleness.

Orchids get their name from the Greek orchis, meaning 'testicle', because of the shape of the subterranean tubers of some species. The word 'orchis' was first used by Theophrastos (372 - 286 B.C.), in his book De historia plantarum (The natural history of plants).

In the case of the Argonauts only females grow a shell, which they use as a case to protect their eggs, which they lay inside the shell in long threads. The female lives in the entrance of her shell and guards her eggs, until the young hatch.

The real beauty of these natural works of art will be best appreciated with the aid of the looking glass.