This article from The Times U.K. is full of purple prose about orchids, and naturally it caught my eye:
"IN WESTERN civilisation, the rose may bespeak
courtly love, and the lily purity, but orchids say something else, and
bluntly — sex."
The writer goes on to describe the orchids’ steamy connotations throughout history:
" In Hamlet Queen Gertrude cannot bring herself to say the “grosser name” that “liberal shepherds” give to Orchis mascula, one of the flowers Ophelia picks before taking the plunge.
It
might have been any one of the hundred or so vernacular names for
orchids that abounded in 16th and 17th-century England, none of them
exactly printable."…So marked was the connection that John Ruskin
proposed changing the very name “orchid” to remove its “unclean or
debasing association”.Of course, the orchid’s legacy of sexual connotations is a
testament to human prurience rather than any real properties that these
plants may possess.
Sadly, that last sentence wasn’t only one in the article to burst my bubble. It goes on to describe what sounds like absolutely fabulous orchid show — that took place last year. Rats. However, there’s some delicious information in the article about the history of the orchid in society.
Here’s a link to some pictures of the lovelies that were present at the show.
I’m not too crushed. The 2005 World Orchid Conference in Dijon, France, is only a few months away….
POLLENATRIX 