Orchis militaris (1857)
四裂红门兰
Orchis militaris (1857)
Ten ways of seeing
- measured cast amber
- upright 1.75 : 1
First Look
搜尽奇峰打草稿。
—— 清·石涛《苦瓜和尚画语录》
Exhaust the strange peaks, and then make the sketch.
The sheet is vertical: the eye climbs and settles in the upper half. Let the plant stand before you look for detail. Then step in close: watch where colour meets line, and whether the line ever breaks. Third, find the darkest small patch: the whole tonal order is measured from there. The pose leans left: the upper half carries 8 points further left than the lower — a living thing, not a diagram.
Name and Thing
The binomial is Orchis militaris: the first word is the genus it belongs among, the second the epithet that sets it apart. The genus name Orchis: Orchis means 'testicle' in Greek, from the paired tubers; the whole family takes its name from it. The Chinese name 四裂红门兰 is a modern rendering of the Latin, not an old garden name.
Form and Colour
Measured on this plate: flower colour covers 3.7% of the sheet, foliage 6.4%, the cast amber with a second note of yellow-green. No other plate shares exactly this measure. Orchids carry pseudobulbs or fleshy roots; six tepals, one modified into a lip that serves as a landing stage, and a column uniting stamens and pistil — a structure unique to the family.No colour group is recorded. Three things fix the habit: leaf arrangement, tepal count, and how the flower is borne.
Composition
The sheet is tall. No details are appended: a plate for looking, not for keying out. The plant covers only 14% of the sheet, centred a little right of centre; the emptiness is where the eye rests.
Line and Colour
In the later nineteenth century chromolithography took over: colour printed rather than painted, line demoted. Take a loupe to three places: petal edge, leaf vein, caption. An unbroken line means engraving; colour crossing the outline means a hand. If you mean to copy it: block in the broad shapes and colours first, detail last; lithographic softness comes from thin washes — two or three pale layers will get you close.
Poetic Resonance
兰叶春葳蕤，桂华秋皎洁。
—— 唐·张九龄《感遇》
Orchid leaves luxuriate in spring; cassia flowers are bright and pure in autumn.
The poem gives the mood first and the picture supplies the form; set the line beside the plate and the corolla becomes its resting point.
Symbolism
In China the orchid is the gentleman who blooms unseen; in Victorian Europe it was luxury and obsession, a single new species worth a fortune. Meanings change their tune: the same flower can say opposite things within a century.
Season and Place
Varies by genus: temperate terrestrials flower in spring and summer, tropical epiphytes almost year-round. the orchids drawn for European portfolios came largely from the cloud forests of Central America and Southeast Asia. The year 1857 on the plate is that of publication, not of flowering — the gathering came a year or two earlier. See this kind of plate in the flowering season if you can: once you have met the living flower, you stop reading only colour.
The Book and the Hand
“Illustrations of orchidaceous plants; a series of one hundred figures, chiefly selected from the Botanical register and British flower garden” carries only Sarah Anne Drake, Edwin Dalton Smith's name. The image is public domain; the hand-colouring is still one person's hand.
What to Take Away
Carry three rules away: whole before detail; line before colour; picture before book. The flower of that year is dust, yet its image on paper has outlived every living cousin.
About this plate
Orchis militaris (1857) is plate 78, from Illustrations of orchidaceous plants; a series of one hundred figures, chiefly selected from the Botanical register and British flower garden, drawn by Sarah Anne Drake, Edwin Dalton Smith. This public-domain plate is reproduced at high resolution, free to view and download. Publication: London, Willis and Sotheran, 1857.
