Phalaenopsis esmeralda var candidula
蝴蝶兰属
Phalaenopsis esmeralda var candidula
Ten ways of seeing
- measured cast yellow-green
- upright 1.38 : 1
First Look
论画以形似，见与儿童邻。
—— 宋·苏轼《书鄢陵王主簿所画折枝》
To judge painting by likeness alone is the view of a child.
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 where the green is deepest: the whole tonal order is measured from that patch.
Name and Thing
The binomial is Phalaenopsis esmeralda: the first word is the genus it belongs among, the second the epithet that sets it apart. Two words carry a whole provenance. The Chinese name 蝴蝶兰属 is a modern rendering of the Latin, not an old garden name.
Form and Colour
Measured on this plate: flower colour covers 11.0% of the sheet, foliage 14.4%, the cast yellow-green with a second note of amber. 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. a moss green. 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 fills 40% of the sheet, centred below centre — the herbarium way, drawn to be read whole.
Line and Colour
In the later nineteenth century chromolithography took over: colour printed rather than painted, line demoted. There is evidence on the back too: the plate mark pressed into the paper, the slight relief of the pigment, lines worn shallow in a later printing. 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
北风受节南雁翔，崇兰委君时菊芳。
—— 唐·王勃《秋夜长》
The poem gives the mood first and the picture supplies the form; set the line beside the plate and the green 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. Flower language was added later; the flower knows nothing of it, and that innocence is part of its power.
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 1885 on the plate is that of publication, not of flowering — the gathering came a year or two earlier. Read the locality and the flowering season both with a discount: one is hearsay, the other a ten-day peak.
The Book and the Hand
“Lindenia: Iconography of the Orchids” carries only Jean Jules Linden's name. A plate is collective work: drawer, engraver and colourist were different hands, and the unnamed ones decided how good it looks.
What to Take Away
Carry three rules away: whole before detail; line before colour; picture before book. Two centuries on, the plant may still flower in some garden; the one on this sheet stopped in the season of 1885.
About this plate
Phalaenopsis esmeralda var candidula is plate 136, from Lindenia: Iconography of the Orchids, drawn by Jean Jules Linden. This public-domain plate is reproduced at high resolution, free to view and download. Publication: Gand [Belgium] :Impr. F. Meyer-van Loo,1885-1906.
