Odontoglossum wilckeanum var rothschildianum.
文心兰属
Odontoglossum wilckeanum var rothschildianum.
Ten ways of seeing
- measured cast yellow-green
- upright 1.43 : 1
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.
Name and Thing
The binomial is Odontoglossum wilckeanum: 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 文心兰属 is a modern rendering of the Latin, not an old garden name.
Form and Colour
Measured on this plate: flower colour covers 75.4% of the sheet, foliage 0.0%, 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. Filed under yellow — a honey-yellow, built in washes from a pale ground. 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 81% of the sheet, centred near the 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
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.
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.
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 1888 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
“Reichenbachia. Orchids” carries only Frederick Sander's name. From drawing to plate the sheet passed through several hands — the engraver aimed at accuracy, the colourist at speed, and between them lies each plate's unevenness.
What to Take Away
Appreciation is not knowledge but habit — one more look each time. Two centuries on, the plant may still flower in some garden; the one on this sheet stopped in the season of 1888.
About this plate
Odontoglossum wilckeanum var rothschildianum. is plate 149, from Reichenbachia. Orchids, drawn by Frederick Sander. This public-domain plate is reproduced at high resolution, free to view and download. Publication: St. Albans, F. Sander & Co., 1888-1894.
