Vanda parishii var marriottiana.

Twelve ways of seeing

• measured cast yellow-green
• upright 1.39 : 1
• published 1888
• Plate 184

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

   六法者何？一、气韵生动是也；二、骨法用笔是也；三、应物象形是也；四、随类赋彩是也；五、经营位置是也；六、传移模写是也。

   —— 南齐·谢赫《古画品录》

   The six laws: spirit resonance alive; bone-method in the brush; matching form; colour by kind; planning the placing; copying the masters.

   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

   The binomial is Vanda parishii: 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 湿唇兰 is a modern rendering of the Latin, not an old garden name.

3. 03

   Form and Colour

   Measured on this plate: flower colour covers 22.1% of the sheet, foliage 0.1%, 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.No colour group is recorded. Three things fix the habit: leaf arrangement, tepal count, and how the flower is borne.

4. 04

   Composition

   Tall and narrow, the plant rising in one movement with generous margins — the upright format of most floras. (about 1.39 : 1) No details are appended: a plate for looking, not for keying out. The plant covers only 23% 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. 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. The plate records ten days of peak; the other three hundred are leaf, fruit and rest.

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 184. The image is public domain; the hand-colouring is still one person's hand.

9. 09

   Poetic Resonance

   玉白兰芳不相顾，青楼一笑轻千金。

   —— 唐·温庭筠《懊恼曲》

   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. Meanings change their tune: the same flower can say opposite things within a century.

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.