Thursday, March 30, 2023

Orchids — Like sex dolls for bees

 

     In March, I visited the Orchid Show at the Chicago Botanic Garden. Three times. Quite a lot, really, a sufficient number of visits to make an outside observer, such as you, suspect that I really like orchids a lot. Which I do not, particularly.
      Don't get me wrong. I don't mind orchids. They're a fine flower, even though they tend to look like colorful alien insects or the faces of screaming babies. There's certainly enough of them — 25,000 species of orchid scattered all over the world. They seem rare, and often are as individuals. But taken together, orchids are the most prevalent flower. And also the oldest, which makes sense, because they seem like something a brontosaurus would munch on under a purple Jurassic sky. 
     I just happen to prefer, aesthetically oh, zinnias, or daisies or irises, or roses, or just about any other bloomin' bloom. Flowers that are round, and less, umm, weird-looking, flowers without, as the Oxford English Dictionary demurely puts it, such notable "grotesqueness of form."*
     So how did I end up going to the Botanic Garden show three times? Quite organically. The first was with my wife, who wanted to see the show. I of course went along because where she goes I go. And the second with my sister, visiting from Dallas. I thought would like the show, and she did. And the third, last Sunday, with friends, scheduled by my wife.  
     The show ended Sunday, so I'm safe, for another year.
     "Orchid," incidentally, is a rather new word — the OED traces it only back to 1845. Though the word made up for lost time. No lesser scientist than Charles Darwin turned his attention to orchids, following up on his 1859 On the Origin of Species in 1862 with On the Various Contrivances by Which British and Foreign Orchids Are Fertilised by Insects, not as well known, yet continuing his evolutionary theme by noting that orchids that are pollinated by the wind have pale, unscented petals, while those requiring insects to do the deed are equipped with bright petals and fragrant nectar to lure them in. 
     Better suited to the task at hand, though I suppose you could argue that this was due to intelligent design— there must be a God, because how else could certain species of orchid offer almost perfect approximations of female bee anatomy, so as to collect the pollen that scrapes off male bees as they try to fuck them. I wish religious sorts would. That's cosmology I would be tempted to admire, if not consider.
    Speaking of religion and other commercial endeavors, orchids do not have a lot of practical applications, beyond the horticultural display of the plants themselves. There's only one I know of, but it's a good one: the fruit of an orchid known as the vanilla planifolia, or as it is more generally called, vanilla.
    Anyway, while I don't have anything special to say about orchids,  I did take these photos of them that I thought I would pass along. If this all seems out-of-left field, the truth is, I had something else I wrote ready to go Wednesday night, regarding dead friends. But I want to hold it, and think about it a bit. We are allowed to think about things. Right? If only as a change of pace. Such as flowers. We can think about them. Not for long, true, particularly orchids. But they will have to do for today.

* On Twitter, my friend Bill Savage provides some literary backup for my lack of enthusiasm for orchids. "General Sternwood, in The Big Sleep, to Philip Marlowe re: orchids: 'They are nasty things. Their flesh is too much like the flesh of men. And their perfume has the rotten sweetness of a prostitute.'"




18 comments:

  1. Today you wrote like I do! I am flattered to bits.
    Barbara

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  2. I guess you never read any of the Nero Wolfe novels by Rex Stout. Wolfe was obsessed with orchids & had a huge greenhouse on the roof of his Manhattan townhouse where he raised just about every type of orchid known.

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    1. Can't say I have. Should I? And more importantly, are they written by Barbara?

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    2. You don't need the Nero Wolfe books to become familiar with the portly detective. He's been featured in movies, TV and radio series. (There's nothing like hearing Sydney Greenstreet as Wolfe, rumbling his way through the Latin names of his favorite orchids, which get a reference in many episodes of the radio series from 1950-51.) In fact he's the subject of a current flashback storyline in the "Dick Tracy" comic strip, having been lured out of his penthouse apartment to inspect some rare orchids, and finding himself kidnapped.

      P.S. Darwin's book title is "On the Origin of Species"; there is no "the" preceding "Species" (something that has tripped up more than one "Jeopardy!" contestant over the years). Later editions dropped the "On" from the title as well.

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  3. Was there Sunday as well. Also my wife's idea. The place was packed, Such fervor among the believers. Almost seemed like a religious gathering. Definitely beyond me. At least it stopped raining before we entered the grounds.

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  4. A little ornery today. That’s fine.
    Nice change of pace as it raises a question that will never be answered satisfactorily for me.
    It’s fine to be just okay with your preferences for certain flowers just as it’s fine to be okay with different preferences for works of art.
    What is beautiful to one may not be beautiful to another. Is an object even art at all?
    How one places a dollar value on a work of art is beyond my comprehension (supply and demand is only a part of the equation) and the outrageous prices the mega wealthy pay is even further out.

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  5. I like how the real topic at hand (and in mind) is revealed at the end, one of the many useful outcomes of taking the time to consider the blooms. That’s real.

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    1. Same here.I don't know how else to say this, but I'm eagerly awaiting to read what Mr. S. will write about dead friends. My wife and I have lost more friends and relatives in the last five years than we lost in the previous fifty. We're at that age (75), and we're not kids anymore.

      Not much of a flower guy. If I had to pick any favorites, it would be the common everyday ones...like sunflowers. And daylilies, whose time is brief but beautiful. Daylilies next to the screen porch mean summertime to me.

      The Cleveland Botanical Garden has a big orchid show every year. Three weeks ago, my wife took her orchid-loving best friend from high school to see them. Her friend is not in good shape, so my wife had to push her around in a wheelchair. My wife didn't do that because she likes orchids all that much...she did it because she was keeping a longtime promise. It's what she does.

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  6. My wife has bought so many orchids over the years, just at the grocery store you know or home Depot that we ended up with several that after prolonged dormancy rebloomed she's learned enough about keeping orchids that she doesn't kill them through overwatering or the wrong temperature, but she takes no credit for their reblooming.

    When people stop by and notice a rebloomer they're quite impressed and complain that they've never been able to get one to rebloom. What's your secret? They say she says try not to kill them

    I like them well enough but I like all flowers I really do and I do some gardening of my own cannabis is what I really enjoy growing not a user. But man I really love that plant. One of my favorites

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  7. I guess I was excited that sometimes you can come down to my lower level, and I really enjoy the company no matter how fleeting.
    Barbara
    PS I never wrote about Nero Wolfe.

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  8. Nero Wolfe is great. My north shore orchid story comes from a reception in some alum's house for students admitted to CalTech--where my daughter already knew she wasn't going to go, but what the heck. Beautiful orchids all over the house. I asked our hostess if she had a greenhouse or somewhere where she tended them when they weren't blooming. "Oh no, I have a service."

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  9. It's always seemed perplexing to me. Which is harder to believe, that "this was due to intelligent design... certain species of orchid offer almost perfect approximations of female bee anatomy...?" Along with all the bizarre and varied fish in the depths of the ocean with their clever adaptations that had never been seen by anyone until relatively recently. What's the point of them? Etc., etc., as with so much of the vast universe. Or that the whole shebang has evolved over eons from nothing? Seems incredible. Even wondering about it is probably enough to get one canceled from polite liberal society, but so it goes.

    I'm sorry, Barbara, but I don't really get what's "lower level" about the writing of today's post. Granted, it's not a topic that'll be on front pages, but the serendipity of the subject matter here is one of the things I most appreciate about EGD, and the quality of the presentation seems no different than what we're accustomed to. : )

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  10. The photos I find startlingly beautiful.

    john

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  11. The Big Sleep quote is incorrect. General Sternwood says “they have the rotten sweetness of corruption” not prostitution. About the four minute mark of the movie.

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    1. Most people offering corrections are themselves mistaken, and you are no exception. Bill is quoting the book, not the movie.

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