Western perceptions of the orchid are explored mo re fully in Martha W. Hoffman Lewis, ‘Power and passion: the orchid in literature’, in Orchid Biology V, pp. 207–49; Margaret B. Freeman, The Unicorn Tapestries (New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1976), pp. 143–53; Reinikka, A History of the Orchid, p. 5; and Leonard J. Lawler, ‘Ethnobotany of the Orchidaceae’, Orchid Biology, Reviews and Perspectives, III, ed. Joseph Arditti (Ithaca, New York, Comstock Pub. Associates, 1984), pp. 27–149. See also Geoffrey Hadley, ‘Orchid Mycorrhiza’, Orchid Biology, II, pp. 83–118; Parkinson, Theatrum Botanicum, pp. 1341–62; Miller, The Gardeners Dictionary, entry for ‘Orchis’; Caroli Linnaei, Species Plantarum (2 vols, Stockholm, 1753), vol. 2, pp. 939–54; and Erasmus Darwin, The Botanic Garden; A Poem, in Two Parts. Part II, containing the Loves of the Plants (London, 1791).
Charles Darwin wrote about orchids in On the Various Contrivances by which British and Foreign Orchids are Fertilised by Insects, and on the Good Effects of Intercrossing (London, John Murray, 1862); and John Ruskin, in Proserpina, vol. 1, pp. 202–205. See also M. M. Mahood, ‘Ruskin’s flowers of evil’, in The Poet as Botanist (Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 147–82; and Michael Pollan’s introduction to Christian Ziegler, Deceptive Beauties: The World of Wild Orchids (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, c.2011), p. 22.
For a full ethnobotany of Orchidaceae, see Lawler, ‘Ethnobotany of the Orchidaceae’, in Orchid Biology III, pp. 27–149; and for vanilla and the Aztecs, see The Badianus Manuscript (Codex Barberini, Latin 241), ed. and trans. Emily Walcott Emmart (Baltimore, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1940); vanilla appears in plate 104. Also on vanilla, see Michael Lorant, ‘The story of vanilla’, Orchid Review, vol. 92, no. 1094 (December 1984), pp. 404–5; Javier De la Cruz et al., ‘Vanilla: Post-Harvest Operations, 16.6.2009’, from www.fao.org (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations), accessed 7 March 2012; Flückiger and Hanbury, Pharmacographia, pp. 595–8; The Voyages and Adventures of Capt. William Dampier (2 vols, London, 1776), vol. 1, pp. 368–70; and Miller, The Gardeners Dictionary (1768 edn).
My discussion of other exotic orchids draws on these sources: Reinikka, A History of the Orchid, pp. 16–18; Dan H. Nicolson et al., An Interpretation of Van Rheede’s Hortus Malabaricus (Königstein, Koeltz Scientific Books, 1988), pp. 297–303; E. M. Beekman (ed. and trans.), Rumphius’ Orchids: Orchid Texts from the Ambonese Herbal by Georgius Everhardus Rumphius (New Haven, Yale University Press, 2003); Paulus Hermannus, Paradisus Batavus (Lugduni Batavorum, 1698), p. 207 (misnumbered 187); J. Martyn’s Historia Plantarum Rariorum (London, 1728–37); John Hill, Hortus Kewensis (London, 1768), pp. 346–8; William Aiton, Hortus Kewensis; or, a Catalogue of the Plants Cultivated in the Royal Botanic Garden at Kew (3 vols, London, George Nicol, 1789), vol.
3, pp. 294–304; William Townsend Aiton, Hortus Kewensis (5 vols, London, 1810–13), vol. 5, pp. 188–220; and Gardeners’ Chronicle (8 October 1859), p. 807.
For the story of Swainson’s Cattleya, see Sir William Jackson Hooker, Exotic Flora (3 vols, Edinburgh, William Blackwood, 1812–27), vol. 2 (1825), tab. 157; John Lindley, Collectanea Botanica (London, 1821), no. 7, plate 33; other versions of the story are told by Frederick Boyle, About Orchids: A Chat (London, Chapman & Hall, 1893), and Reinikka, A History of the Orchid, pp. 23–5.
Among my sources on Europe’s growing fascination with orchids are: John Lindley’s ‘History, introduction, natural habitats, and cultivation of orchideous epiphytes’, Paxton’s Magazine of Botany and Register of Flowering Plants, vol. 1 (London, 1834), see Paxton’s footnote about orchid numbers on p. 263; John Lindley, The Genera and Species of Orchidaceous Plants (London, Ridgways, 1830–40); the Duke of Devonshire’s death notice in Gardeners’ Chronicle (23 January 1858), pp. 51–2; Paxton’s Magazine of Botany, vol. 1, pp. 14–15; Lindley, Sertum Orchidaceum, especially plates I, III, VIII and XXXIII; ‘New and beautiful orchideae’, in Paxton’s Magazine of Botany, vol. 1, pp. 14–15; Reinikka, A History of Orchids, pp. 169–73; Brent Elliott, ‘The Royal Horticultural Society and its orchids: a social history’, Occasional Papers from the RHS Lindley Library, no. 2, 2010; and James Bateman, The Orchidaceae of Mexico and Guatemala (London, 1837–43). See also James Bateman’s much more manageable A Second Century of Orchidaceous Plants (London, L. Reeve & Co., 1867). On orchid auctions, I consulted R. M. Hamilton (ed.), Orchid Auction Sales in England 1842–1850 (Richmond, British Columbia, 1999); Donal P. McCracken, ‘Robert Plant (1818–1858): a Victorian plant hunter in Natal, Zululand, Mauritius and the Seychelles’, South African Journal of Science, vol. 107, no. 3–4 (March/April 2011); and Benjamin Samuel Williams, The Orchid-Grower’s Manual (London, Chapman and Hall, 1852). See also James Bateman, Address on George Skinner 1867, Orchid History Reference Papers no. 7. ed. R. M. Hamilton (Richmond, British Columbia, 1992).
A good source on the Veitch family nurseries is James H. Veitch, Hortus Veitchii: A History (London, James Veitch & Sons, Chelsea, 1906); see also ‘Royal Exotic Nursery, King’s Road, Chelsea’, Gardeners’ Chronicle (15 October 1859), pp. 831–2. Joseph Dalton Hooker tells the story of Vanda coerulea in Himalayan Journals (2 vols, London, 1854), vol. 2, pp. 319–23. For the endangered Lady’s slipper orchid, see Paxton’s Magazine of Botany, vol. 4 (1837), pp. 247–8; and ‘Police on petal patrol to protect UK’s rarest wild flower’, Daily Mail, 7 May 2010.
An excellent contemporary source on Sander’s orchid nursery is Frederick Boyle, The Woodlands Orchids (London, Macmillan and Co., 1901); see also Arthur Swinson, Frederick Sander: The Orchid King, The Record of a Passion (London, Hodder and Stoughton, 1970); and Henry Frederick Conrad Sander, Reichenbachia. Orchids Illustrated and Described (2 vols, London, H. Sotheran & Co., 1888–90), and the Second Series (2 vols, London, H. Sotheran & Co., 1892–4). Sander’s bouquet for Queen Victoria is reported in London Illustrated News (25 June 1887), p. 711, and in ‘The Queen’s jubilee bouquet’, Maitland Mercury & Hunter River General Advertiser of New South Wales (4 August 1887).
On the orchid’s social power, I consulted Sir Jeremiah Colman, Hybridization of Orchids: The Experience of an Amateur (printed for private circulation [1932]); and ‘Mrs Pankhurst on Recent Developments’, Morning Post (11 February 1913) for news of the suffragettes at Kew. For the orchid’s current protection, see Royal Horticultural Society, Conservation and Environment Guidelines, Bringing Plants in from the Wild (Wisley, RHS Science Departments, January 2002). For Vanda coerulea’s removal from CITES Appendix 1, see www.kew.org/plants-fungi/Vanda-coerulea.htm, consulted 4 April 2013.
Here are my sources for the orchid in western literature: William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act IV, Scene 7; Ellacombe, The Plant-Lore and Garden-Craft of Shakespeare, pp. 157–9, entry for ‘Long Purples’; Mahood, The Poet as Botanist, pp. 112–46; Lewis, ‘Power and passion’ in Orchid Biology V, pp. 207–49; Huysmans, Against Nature, pp. 72–81; Marcel Proust, ‘Un amour de Swann’, in Du Coté de Chez Swann: À la Recherche du Temps Perdu (Paris, Le Livre de Poche, 1966), p. 277; Goody, The Culture of Flowers, p. 298; H. G. Wells, ‘The Flowering of the Strange Orchid’, in The Time Machine and the Wonderful Visit and Other Stories, The Works of H. G. Wells, Atlantic Edition, vol. 1 (London, T. Fisher Unwin, 1924), pp. 308–19; ‘The League of Frightened Men’, in Rex Stout, Full House: A Nero Wolfe Omnibus (New York, Viking Press, 1955), pp. 3–212; James Hadley Chase, No Orchids for Miss Blandish (Berne, Alfred Scherz, 1946); ‘Orchids’, in The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke (Garden City, NY, Doubleday, 1966), p. 39; and Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea (London, Penguin, 1968), p. 17.
Finally, on the orchid’s continuing fascination, I turned to Susan Orlean, The Orchid Thief (London, Vintage, 2000); Eric Hansen, Orchid Fever (London,
Methuen, 2000); Tom Hart Dyke and Paul Winder, The Cloud Garden (London, Bantam Press, 2003); and Reginald Farrer, My Rock-Garden (London, Edward Arnold, 1907), p. 279.
Illustrations
BLACK AND WHITE ILLUSTRATIONS
1. ‘The Su
mmer Garden’, drawn and engraved by Crispin de Passe the Younger, Hortus Floridus, 1614 (Courtesy of Dover Publications, Inc.)
2. Nelumbium speciosum, Curtis’s Botanical Magazine, vol. 23–24, 1806 (Image provided by Peter H. Raven Library, Missouri Botanical Garden, http://www.missouribotanicalgarden.org/)
3. A funerary banquet of offerings topped with Nile lotus flowers, from an Egyptian Book of the Dead, c.1070–945 BCE (© Alfredo Dagli Orti/The Art Archive/Corbis)
4. The curious seed-head of water lilies (Nymphaea) and the eastern lotus (Nelumbo nucifera), from Joseph Gaertner, De fructibus et seminibus plantarum, Stuttgart, 1788 (Image provided by Peter H. Raven Library, Missouri Botanical Garden, http://www.missouribotanicalgarden.org/)
5. Brahma, the Hindu god of creation, emerges from a lotus flower emanating from the navel of Vishnu, the Vedic Supreme Being (British Library/Robana via Getty Images)
6. White lily from John Gerard, The Herball or General Historie of Plantes, 1597 (Image provided by Peter H. Raven Library, Missouri Botanical Garden, http://www.missouribotanicalgarden.org/)
7. Bronze-Age Minoan wall painting of red lilies and swallows from a town house at Akrotiri on the Aegean island of Thera (DEA/G. Nimatallah/Getty Images)
8. John Tenniel’s engraving of Alice’s encounter with the Tiger-lily in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-glass, 1872 (Morphart Creation/Shutterstock.com)
9. Sunflowers, drawn and engraved by Crispin de Passe the Younger, Hortus Floridus, 1614 (Courtesy of Dover Publications, Inc.)
10. The Aztec ruler Nezahualpilli (d. 1515) holding in his left hand a stylized sunflower. From the late sixteenth-century Codex Ixtlilxochitl (Bibliothèque nationale de France)
11. Cartoon by Edward Linley Sambourne for Punch, 25 June 1881, depicting the Irish writer and aesthete Oscar Wilde as a sunflower (Universal Images Group/Getty Images)
12. Poppies from a late printing (1790) of Nicholas Culpeper’s The English Physitian Enlarged (Image provided by Peter H. Raven Library, Missouri Botanical Garden, http://www.missouribotanicalgarden.org/)
13. An opium poppy from the ‘Vienna Dioscorides’, an early sixth-century Byzantine copy of Dioscorides’ De Materia Medica (SSPL via Getty Images)
14. Gustave Doré’s illustration of the Lascar’s room in Charles Dickens’s The Mystery of Edwin Drood, for London: A Pilgrimage, 1872 (© Lebrecht Music & Arts/Corbis)
15. Roses, drawn and engraved by Crispin de Passe the Younger, Hortus Floridus, 1614 (Courtesy of Dover Publications, Inc.)
16. A double yellow rose from the Levant, described by Carolus Clusius in Curae Posteriores, Leiden, 1611 (Image provided by Peter H. Raven Library, Missouri Botanical Garden, http://www.missouribotanicalgarden.org/)
17. Frederick Stuart Church, Silence, c.1880 (© 2013. Photo: Smithsonian American Art Museum/Art Resource/Scala, Florence)
18. Tulips, drawn and engraved by Crispin de Passe the Younger, Hortus Floridus, 1614 (Courtesy of Dover Publications, Inc.)
19. Europe’s first garden tulip, Conrad Gesner, 1559 (Universitätsbibliothek Erlangen-Nürnberg, MS 2386, folio 220v)
20. John Lambert depicted on a playing card (Bridgeman Art Library/English School/Getty Images)
21. Title page to John Lindley’s Sertum Orchidaceum, 1838 (Image provided by Peter H. Raven Library, Missouri Botanical Garden, http://www.missouribotanicalgarden.org/)
22. Orchid in the traditional style, Chen Banding (© Artkey/Corbis)
23. The librarian’s nightmare: woodcut from a drawing by George Cruikshank in James Bateman’s The Orchidaceae of Mexico and Guatemala,1837–43 (Image provided by Peter H. Raven Library, Missouri Botanical Garden, http://www.missouribotanicalgarden.org/)
COLOUR ILLUSTRATIONS
SECTION ONE
1. June’s flowers in Robert Furber’s Twelve Months of Flowers, 1730 (© Historical Picture Archive/Corbis)
2. Yun Shou-p’ing, Lotuses on a Summer Evening, 1684 (© 2013. Photo: The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Art Resource/Scala, Florence)
3. Pierre-Joseph Redouté’s blue Nile ‘lotus’ (Nymphaea caerulea) from Choix des Plus Belles Fleurs, Paris, 1827–33 (Image provided by Peter H. Raven Library, Missouri Botanical Garden, http://www.missouribotanicalgarden.org/)
4. The Hindu god Krishna removes the clothes of cowgirls who are bathing in a lotus pool, c.1820–30 (Pahari School/Bridgeman Art Library/Getty Images)
SECTION TWO
5. Sandro Botticelli, The Annunciation, c.1490 (© Summerfield Press/Corbis)
6. Hog-nose snake with Martagon lily by Mark Catesby for The Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands, London, 1731–43 (Image provided by Peter H. Raven Library, Missouri Botanical Garden, http://www.missouribotanicalgarden.org/)
7. Hand-coloured engraved sunflower from Basilius Besler’s Hortus Eystettensis of 1613 (© Corbis)
8. Vincent van Gogh, Sunflowers, 1887 (DEA Picture Library/Getty Images)
SECTION THREE
9. An opium poppy (Papaver somniferum) from British Phaenogamous Botany on British flowering plants, 1834–43, by William Baxter (Florilegius/SSPL via Getty Images)
10. Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Beata Beatrix, c.1864–1870 (Universal Images Group/Getty Images)
11. Detail of Martin Schongauer’s Madonna of the Rose Bower, 1473 (DEA/G. Dagli Orti/Getty Images)
12. A bouquet of roses (1805) painted by Dr Robert John Thornton and engraved by Richard Earlom, from Temple of Flora, or Garden of Nature (Image pro vided by Peter H. Raven Library, Missouri Botanical Garden, http://www.missouribotanicalgarden.org/)
13. A lady holds a bowl of rose flowers in a Mughal miniature, c.1700–40 (© Stapleton Collection/Corbis)
SECTION FOUR
14. Five tulips from Basilius Besler’s Hortus Eystettensis of 1613 (British Library/Robana via Getty Images)
15. An ‘Istanbul tulip’ from an Ottoman tulip album of 1725 (© Christie’s Images/The Bridgeman Art Library)
16. Pierre-Joseph Redouté’s Lady’s slipper orchid (Cypripedium calceoleus) from Les Liliacées, 1802–16 (Image provided by Peter H. Raven Library, Missouri Botanical Garden, http://www.missouribotanicalgarden.org/)
17. Martin Johnson Heade, Cattleya Orchid and Three Brazilian Hummingbirds, 1871 (National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC)
18. Édouard Manet, Olympia, 1865 (© Corbis)
1. June’s flowers in Robert Furber’s Twelve Months of Flowers (1730) include a sunflower, Martagon lilies, a Bee orchid and roses galore.
2. Lotuses on a Summer Evening (1684) by the Chinese artist, Yun Shou-p’ing.
3. Pierre-Joseph Redouté’s blue Nile ‘lotus’ (Nymphaea caerulea) from Choix des Plus Belles Fleurs (Paris, 1827–33).
4. A playful incarnation of Vishnu, the Hindu god Krishna removes the clothes of the love-smitten cowgirls who are bathing in a lotus pool, c.1820–30.
5. The white Madonna lily brandished by the Angel Gabriel in Sandro Botticelli’s The Annunciation (c.1490) signifies Mary’s purity and virgin state.
6. Hog-nose snake with Martagon lily by the English naturalist Mark Catesby for The Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands (London, 1731–43).
7. Hand-coloured engraved sunflower from Basilius Besler’s Hortus Eystettensis of 1613, recording the plants in the garden of his patron, the Prince-Bishop of Eichstätt.
8. Vincent van Gogh, Sunflowers (1887).
9. An opium poppy (Papaver somniferum) from British Phaenogamous Botany on British flowering plants (1834–43) by Scotsman William Baxter, Curator of the Oxford Botanic Garden.
10. In Beata Beatrix (c.1864–1870), Dante Gabriel Rossetti portrays his dead wife, Elizabeth Siddal, as Dante’s Beatrice Portinari; its ghostly opium poppy hints at Siddal’s death from a laudanum overdose.
11. Detail showing red and white roses and a prominent red peony in Martin Schongauer’s Madonna of the Rose Bower (1473), painted for the Church of St Martin in Colmar, Alsace.
12. A bouquet of ros
es (1805) painted by Dr Robert John Thornton and engraved by Richard Earlom, Thornton’s only painting for his flamboyant Temple of Flora, or Garden of Nature.
13. A lady holds a bowl of rose flowers in a Mughal miniature, c.1700–40, from an album given to Lord Clive of India.
14. Five tulips showing the bowl-shaped flowers favoured by European tastes, from Basilius Besler’s Hortus Eystettensis of 1613.
15. An exquisitely elongated ‘Istanbul tulip’ from an Ottoman tulip album of 1725, when Turkish tulip fever raged.
16. Pierre-Joseph Redouté’s Lady’s slipper orchid (Cypripedium calceoleus) with its characteristic pout, from his monumental Les Liliacées (1802–16).
17. Cattleya Orchid and Three Brazilian Hummingbirds (1871) by Martin Johnson Heade – the orchid worn by Odette de Crécy in Marcel Proust’s À la Recherche du Temps Perdu.
18. Announcing her profession by the orchid she wears in her hair, the demi-mondaine in Édouard Manet’s Olympia caused a scandal when first exhibited at the 1865 Paris Salon.
Note on the Author
Celebrated for her fiction and non-fiction, Jennifer Potter writes about the history and culture of plants, plantsmen and gardens. She reviews for the Times Literary Supplement, and has been variously a Royal Literary Fund Fellow, a Hawthornden Fellow and an Honorary Teaching Fellow on the Warwick Writing Programme. Her most recent books include Strange Blooms and The Rose, A True History, both published by Atlantic Books.
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