Sketching the Pandemic Year 2020 April 19-24 week 17
Phragmipedium Petite Queillette from Smithsonian gardens graces this page of the Smithsonian Engagement Calendar 2020. The write up about the orchid reads : “.. is a hybrid of two parent species. One parent ‘Phragmipedium besseae’ is found only in the forests of Ecuador and Columbia, growing on the rocks and steep banks along fast growing streams. This rare critically endangered orchid is just one of more than 7000 specimens included in the Smithsonian Gardens Orchid Collection.”
We have just one orchid plant - cultivated variety of Phalaenopsis species - a gift from a friend. She gave it me about five years ago and every year it has bloomed again and again. The blooms last for months and the plant graces my coffee table all that time. Rest of the year it’s in our sunroom enjoying the balmy hot conditions - pretty close to the tropical weather of its natural habitat. When I received the plant it was February and in full bloom - but since then the timing of blooms has been creeping up a bit later every year. After the very first one blossom appears, others come in quick succession. The timing was just right for this page. Once it starts blooming I sketch or photograph often capturing it in different lights.
Orchids are works of art by nature - beautiful and ingenious in their form and function. The flowers are shrouded in symbolism in every part of the world. I learned that the word Orchid comes from the Greek orkhis meaning ‘testicles’! The everyday flavoring Vanilla comes from an Orchid too. There are more than 28,000 naturally occurring species in the family Orchidaeceae in the world - in every continent except for Antarctica! And there are thousands of hybrids !!! But many species are also lost or critically endangered due to climate change, loss of habitat and indiscriminate acquisition by orchids hunters and ‘collectors’. There is an intriguing article ‘Orchid Fever’ in the Newyorker magazine by Susan Orlean - which later came to be a book ‘The Orchid Thief’. I read in an article the Indian Newspaper ‘The Hindu’ that : “...in the Rig Veda and the Atharva Veda (1500-800BC) two orchids Rasma - Vanda tessallata and Sanjeevani - Flickingeria macrai have been mentioned as medicinally important. Subsequently, Sushruta Samhita /by Sushruta (Indian Hypocrates) and Charaka Samhita by Charaka listed about a dozen orchid plants used by Ayurveda.” The article continued with a list of orchids that are still used to treat many health issues in Ayurveda, and traditional tribal Medicines world over. With thousands of species will we ever know all the marvels of Orchids ?
Orchid dance watercolor by Meera Rao
