A Timeless History
Chinese writers praised the orchid two and a half thousand years ago; Confucius is said to have called it the king of fragrant plants. Europe went properly mad for them in the nineteenth century — “orchidelirium” — as collectors stripped whole hillsides for the auction rooms and glasshouses were built specifically to hold what they brought back.
SourceRoyal Botanic Gardens, Kew — kew.org, “The wonderful world of orchids” · Encyclopaedia Britannica — britannica.com
Science In Action
Resupination — the bud twists half a turn on its stalk as it opens, so the lip ends up at the bottom • Pollinia — pollen bound into waxy packets that stick to a single visiting insect, so almost none is wasted • Labellum — the third petal, shaped into a landing platform and, in some species, a decoy female insect • Dust seed — up to millions per capsule, with no food store, so a soil fungus must feed the seedling
SourceRoyal Botanic Gardens, Kew — kew.org, “Orchid seeds” · Royal Horticultural Society — rhs.org.uk
Arts
Orchids gave the twentieth century one of its great subjects. Georgia O'Keeffe painted them large enough that people could not walk past — nobody really looks at a flower, she said, so she would paint it big and surprise them into looking. Japan had got there first by the opposite route: Tani Bunchō's 1816 orchids are a few strokes of ink on a small page.
SourceThe Georgia O'Keeffe Museum — okeeffemuseum.org · Cleveland Museum of Art — clevelandart.org, 1985.375.p
Applications Today
Vanilla is the second most expensive spice in the world because outside Mexico its bee is missing: every flower is pollinated by hand, in a window of a few hours, using a method worked out in 1841 by Edmond Albius, a twelve-year-old enslaved boy on Réunion, a French island in the Indian Ocean. Demand is so far beyond supply that most vanillin is now made chemically.
SourceEncyclopaedia Britannica — britannica.com, “vanilla” · The Linnean Society — linnean.org, “Edmond Albius”
One Australian orchid, Rhizanthella, lives its whole life underground — even its flowers open just beneath the soil.
Chysis bractescens (Reichenbachia: Orchids illustrated and described, vol. 1, tab. 18) — Frederick Sander (publisher); plate after H. G. Moon, chromolithograph — 1888 — Biodiversity Heritage Library scan (Missouri Botanical Garden) via Wikimedia Commons — Reichenbachia vol. 1, TAB. 18 — BHL / Flickr biodivlibrary 7999561964
