Miltonia spectabilis

Twelve ways of seeing

One plate, read twelve times over: its name, its colour, the burin and the brush, the shape of the sheet, the season, the soil it came from, the book it belongs to, its language of flowers, the poem it answers to, the lore behind it, how to look, and what remains.

1. 01

   The Name

   The plate is titled “Miltonia spectabilis”, numbered Plate 448. Its binomial is Miltonia spectabilis: the genus places it among its kin, the epithet records a place, a shape or a person. The Chinese name 莫利丽堇兰 is a modern rendering of the Latin, not an old garden name — between a plant and its names there is always translation.

2. 02

   Form and Colour

   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. Filed under orange — an amber orange. The colour is built in washes: a pale ground first, then deepening at the petal base and in shadow. A single plant, laid out on the sheet with nothing hidden.

3. 03

   Line and Colour

   In the later nineteenth century chromolithography took over: colour printed rather than painted, line demoted. Images grew more accurate and less personal. Look closely at the line and the colour: an unbroken line means engraving, colour crossing the outline by half a millimetre means hand-colouring. Craft leaves franker evidence than inscriptions.

4. 04

   Composition

   Broad and horizontal, opening sideways — the format for groups, perched birds, or a whole plant with its roots. (about 0.68 : 1). No details are appended: this is a plate for looking, not for keying out.

5. 05

   Season

   Varies by genus: temperate terrestrials flower in spring and summer, tropical epiphytes almost year-round. The year 1854 on the plate is the year of publication, not of flowering — the gathering came a year or two earlier.

6. 06

   Provenance

   Worldwide, richest on tropical mountains. Chinese cymbidiums come from the hills of the south; the orchids drawn for European portfolios came largely from the cloud forests of Central America and Southeast Asia. In the same volume the kin are shelved together; set several plates side by side and the differences declare themselves.

7. 07

   The Book

   “L'Illustration horticole” was drawn by Charles Antoine Lemaire and published 1854-1896. This plate is Plate 448. The image is in the public domain; the hand-colouring on the paper is still one person's hand, two centuries ago.

8. 08

   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. This plate leans orange, which in flower language adds one more degree of feeling. In a flora it is a species first and a symbol second; the order is worth keeping.

9. 09

   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 orange the corolla becomes its resting point.

10. 10

    Classical Lore

    Confucius, finding an orchid flowering alone in a valley, is said to have composed the 'Lament for the Orchid'; in the Li Sao, orchids are worn as a girdle of virtue. Chinese flower books ranked plants by character; European floras described them by form and name. This plate belongs to the second tradition, yet bears reading by the first. Printed in 1854, at the moment the two traditions began to see each other.

11. 11

    How to Look

    Start with the lip: its markings and curls identify the plant. Then the column — a clearly drawn column usually means the artist worked from a living flower. And read the caption and number: not part of the picture, but the door through which it entered knowledge.

12. 12

    Afterword

    A flora exists to be consulted; look long enough and you forget to consult — someone in 1854 gave a whole day to a single flower.