Lælia anceps sanderiana.

Twelve ways of seeing

• measured cast yellow-green
• upright 1.41 : 1
• published 1888
• Plate 92

Not a catalogue entry but a way of looking: how to stand, what to notice, how the line was cut, when it flowers, where it came from, who made it — and then the poems and the classics that taught China to see the same flower. Read the twelve in order and the plate opens.

1. 01

   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.

2. 02

   Name and Thing

   No reliable binomial survives, so the printed title must serve. Neither name nor binomial survives: the printed title must do.

3. 03

   Form and Colour

   Measured on this plate: flower colour covers 4.4% of the sheet, foliage 0.3%, the cast 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. Read the outline, then the colour layers, then the brush.

4. 04

   Composition

   Tall and narrow, the plant rising in one movement with generous margins — the upright format of most floras. (about 1.41 : 1) No details are appended: a plate for looking, not for keying out. The plant covers only 18% of the sheet, centred below centre; the emptiness is where the eye rests. Old plates set the plant slightly off centre, with unequal margins — that small imbalance is what keeps it alive.

5. 05

   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.

6. 06

   Season

   Varies by genus: temperate terrestrials flower in spring and summer, tropical epiphytes almost year-round. The year 1888 on the plate is that of publication, not of flowering — the gathering came a year or two earlier. The best time to read such a plate is its flowering season: three minutes under the tree explains what no text can.

7. 07

   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. The localities on the plate are those of a century ago; plants travel and places change their names.

8. 08

   The Book and the Hand

   “Reichenbachia. Orchids” was drawn by Frederick Sander and published 1888-1894. This plate is Plate 92. The image is public domain; the hand-colouring is still one person's hand.

9. 09

   Poetic Resonance

   柳拂兰桡花满枝，石城城下暮头迟。

   —— 唐·鱼玄机《过鄂州》

   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.

10. 10

    The Written Tradition

    芝兰生于深林，不以无人而不芳；君子修道立德，不为穷困而改节。

    —— 《孔子家语·在厄》

    The orchid grows deep in the forest and is fragrant though no one comes; so the gentleman cultivates virtue and does not alter it in hardship.

    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. The difference is not of quality but of question: Europe asks what it is, China asks whom it resembles.

11. 11

    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.

12. 12

    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.