Lælio-cattleya elegans var blenheimensis.

Twelve ways of seeing

• measured cast red
• upright 1.45 : 1
• published 1888
• Plate 105

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

   夫象物必在于形似，形似须全其骨气。

   —— 唐·张彦远《历代名画记》

   Likeness is the threshold; bone-and-breath is the point.

   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 yellow is deepest: the whole tonal order is measured from that patch.

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 21.6% of the sheet, foliage 0.0%, the cast red 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. Filed under yellow — a honey-yellow, built in washes from a pale ground. 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 1.45 : 1) No details are appended: a plate for looking, not for keying out. The plant covers only 25% of the sheet, centred near the 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. Decide first whether it was printed or painted; only then discuss whether it is beautiful.

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. Note the season. Phenology is the most practical tool of appreciation.

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 volume was made in 1888-1894, when most of this knowledge came from living plants under glass.

8. 08

   The Book and the Hand

   “Reichenbachia. Orchids” was drawn by Frederick Sander and published 1888-1894. This plate is Plate 105. The image is public domain; the hand-colouring is still one person's hand.

9. 09

   Poetic Resonance

   扈江离与辟芷兮，纫秋兰以为佩。

   —— 战国·屈原《离骚》

   I gird on river angelica and secluded angelica; I twist autumn orchids into a chaplet to wear.

   The poem gives the mood first and the picture supplies the form; set the line beside the plate and the yellow the corolla becomes its resting point.

10. 10

    The Written Tradition

    释名（闲）、木香、香水兰、女兰、香草、燕尾香、大泽兰、兰泽草、煎泽草、省头草、都梁香、孩儿菊、千金草。气味（叶）辛、平、无毒。

    —— 本草纲目·兰草第九十三

    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. This plate leans yellow, which in flower language adds one more degree of feeling. Meanings change their tune: the same flower can say opposite things within a century.

12. 12

    What to Take Away

    If you keep one line, keep Guo Xi's: from afar its momentum, up close its texture. Two centuries on, the plant may still flower in some garden; the one on this sheet stopped in the season of 1888.