ORCHID Family: Orchidaceae Botanical Name: Orchis Common ...

<strong>ORCHID</strong><br />

<strong>Family</strong>: <strong>Orchidaceae</strong><br />

<strong>Botanical</strong> <strong>Name</strong>: <strong>Orchis</strong><br />

<strong>Common</strong> <strong>Name</strong>: Orchid<br />

Like many plants the orchid has quite an extraordinary history filled with Lust, Greed and<br />

Wealth. The Aztecs who drank the vanilla mixed with chocolate prized the most famous<br />

orchid, the vanilla orchid. The name “vanilla” is derived<br />

from the Spanish vainilla for the shape of the seedpod, or<br />

vanilla bean. Vanilla has the same root as “vagina.”<br />

Westerners did not appreciate orchids at first: “our<br />

Privateers…. have often thrown (vanilla) away when they<br />

took any, wondering why the Spaniards should lay up<br />

Tobacco stems,” wrote the pirate and botanist William<br />

Dampier, who was the darling of London society when<br />

not capturing ships and killing their crews. But by 1753,<br />

Linnaeus recommended vanilla as an aphrodisiac in his<br />

book Materia Medica, which listed some sixty-nine<br />

species of orchid.<br />

Orchid’s name is Greek orchis (testicle.) The tubers of Mediterranean orchids look like<br />

paired testicles of differing sizes, the smaller storing the previous year’s food. The<br />

cattleya orchid was named for William Cattley in 1818. He received it as packing around<br />

other plants. After it flowered, it died and wasn’t found again for many years. At a ball<br />

in Paris an orchid fancier noticed one in the cleavage of a South American<br />

ambassadoress. He learned that it came from Brazil. The cattleya lives up to the<br />

lascivious reputation in Marcel Proust’s Swann’s Way, when Swann offers to fasten one<br />

“a little more securely” in “the cleft of (Odette’s) low-necked bodice,” He then suggests<br />

he should “brush off” the pollen fallen from it, and the rest follows.<br />

Other orchids are called “ladies’ fingers” or “ladies’ tresses,” or “long purples.” The<br />

paphiopedilum orchids are named for Paphos, the site of a temple on Cyprus where<br />

Ahprodite was worshipped and prostitutes were available, for a pedilon (a slipper.)<br />

Orchids are, even in their names, closely connected with the power that “geveth lust unto<br />

the workes of generacyon and multiplycacyon of sperma” (Hieronymous Braunschweig,<br />

Book of Distillation.)<br />

The sexual behavior of orchids has confounded botanists since they first began to be<br />

studied. To germinate, their seeds need to be penetrated by fungus threads. Orchids go<br />

to extremes to propagate themselves, just as those who worked to get them went to<br />

extremes to show off their wealth and power.<br />

In the nineteenth century orchids were collected by the ton. Once, four thousand trees<br />

were cut down for the orchids growing on them. One collector alone was said to have<br />

sent one hundred thousand orchids to England, and yes, many died. Wilhelm Micholitz

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sent home an orchid growing in a<br />

human skull, which was auctioned<br />

for a huge sum complete with<br />

container.<br />

Orchid hunters mostly searched<br />

for riches rather then knowledge<br />

of the amazing plant world.<br />

Nobody seemed to care that huge<br />

areas were stripped of native<br />

orchids, and we cannot feel sorry<br />

for their collectors who met with<br />

trouble. Even now, orchids are<br />

more often corsages for the rich<br />

than comfort for those who live in poor places and could enjoy their beauty in the native<br />

habitat. Their beauty, although undeniable, is not the beauty of simplicity.<br />

100 Flowers and How They Got Their <strong>Name</strong>s<br />

by: Diana Wells