Edita Vilkeviciute is lensed by Sølve Sundsbø in ‘Beauty: This Soft Embrace’ for Vogue Japan’s November 2011 issue. Orchids are a great symbol of the fusion of beauty and sensuality in females and in nature. 

Considering the Earth in all its plenitude, I am startled to read that orchids are the largest and most diverse plant family on the planet, consisting of between 20,000 and 30,000 varieties.

The sensually explicit orchids — always in my home — represent 8 percent of flowering species, and botanists say their bewildering beauty has one single aim: pollination. In a new book ‘Deceptive Beauties: The World of Wild Orchids’, the biologist now photographer Christian Ziegler reminds us that makes orchids truly unique is the way each species adapts to attract individual insect species for pollination.

The natural temptation offered by orchids is always the same: sex.