Orchid Show

Yesterday we visited the conservatory at Volunteer Park to see the orchid show. It felt good to step into the warmth. I like conservatories, there’s something enchanting about a glass house full of tropical plants. As soon as you enter you’re enveloped in a spell of primal sensation, fascinating shapes and subtle hues, weird organs and big veined leaves. The orchids were mounted on a table at the center of the room. The first to catch my attention was Comparettia speciosa, tiny heart-shaped flowers of vivid tangerine. A comical looking Rossioglossum Rawdon Jester shot propeller-like petals into the space, as if being an orchid were intrinsically funny. Orchids are notoriously complicated. That’s what makes them funny. Proust never the left the house without an orchid in his lapel. He knew. Complication is funny, and strangely erotic, like the Sphinx Moth with its long proboscis for pollinating the white flowers of Hell’s Love.

An elderly man with his gray hair in a ponytail stood by the table answering questions. He had a badge that said “Ask Me About Orchids.” He was quite erudite on the subject. We asked him how to pollinate an orchid and he said pour yourself a glass of wine and get a toothpick. He did a good job fielding the kind of questions a fussy exotic flower like the orchid inspires, how should orchids be watered, what’s the best potting material, how do I get my orchid to rebloom, how to repot an orchid, is it true Confucius used to keep orchids in his room for inspiration for his writing, what does Theophrastus have to say on the subject of orchids? Is being a Druid the answer to existence? I fell under the spell of a Paphiopedilum henryanum. It answered in silence.

Orchids have a lot of tricks up their sleeves. Their entire existence seems to be focused on pollination. Ways to lure insects into their various traps and pollinium. Bucket orchids have a modified labellum that forms a bucket that traps male euglossine bees. Ellanthus and Isochilus orchids attract hummingbirds with a rich nectar of sugars and amino acids. The bee orchid has a large lip-shaped petal that resembles a female bee. The warty hammer orchid of Western Australia produces a chemical scent that mimics the pheromone of a sexually receptive female thynnine wasp. What strange intelligence moves through these things? How do they figure these things out? Science does not think, said Heidegger. He was a real pistil, that guy.

Orchis italica, commonly known as the naked man orchid or the Italian orchid, is a species of orchid native to the Mediterranean. Orchis bohemia resembles a poet living in obscurity in the south of France. Orchis Julianus resembles a Romanian filmmaker. The venerable Orchis wiseass has a unique strategy for luring young women into its purview and squirting them with lemonade. They say the right kind of orchid can bring so much beauty into your home that the entire substrate of reality begins to creak and stubbornly approve the vague proposals we bring into the realm of the epiphyte. Live with an orchid and live with universals in your tea. Intuitions about your skull. Attracting pollinators. Philosophers whose eyes blur with divine pollinations.