LibGuides: Lenhardt Library of the Chicago Botanic Garden Digitized Collections: Orchids

Exhibitions:

Exotic Orchids: Orchestrated in Print

Illustration by Émilie Pradès Vouga, 1840-1909.

The Lenhardt Library exhibition created to complement the 2014 Orchid Show and was titled Exotic Orchids: Orchestrated in Print.

Running through Sunday, May 11, 2014, it featured such rare books as Charles Darwin’s seminal On the Various Contrivances by which British and Foreign Orchids are Fertilised by Insects, and on the Good Effects of Intercrossing, published in 1862.

Another item was Curtis’s Botanical Magazine, with a beautiful color illustration of Angraecum sesquipedale, also known as Darwin’s orchid.

Illustration of Darwin's orchid from Curtis's Botanical Magazine via the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL)

Orchid Illustrations from the Lenhardt Library's Rare Book Collection

Illustrations d'orchidées des Indes Orientales Néerlandaises, ou, Choix de plantes nouvelles et peu connues de la famille des orchidées
W. H. (Willem Hendrik) de Vriese, 1806-1862.

Orchids

Illustration: left, Henry Lambert; right, W.H. de Vriese.

Les orchidées : 1. série : 6 planches
Émilie Pradès Vouga, 1840-1909.
Les orchidées et les plantes de serre
Henry Lambert.
[Reichenbachia] [graphic] : [orchids illustrated and described].
F. (Frederick) Sander, 1847-1920

Darwin's orchids

Stories from the Rare Book Collection: Darwin's orchids, moths, and evolutionary serendipity
Given that the Library has more than 600 books and journals about orchids, I could literally dedicate any number of future columns to dear orchids. I will resist that temptation, but instead will turn to another monograph in the Library's exhibition by none other than Charles Darwin (1809–82), entitled On the various contrivances by which British and foreign orchids are fertilised by insects, and on the good effects of intercrossing. Published by John Murray in London on May 15, 1862, the book explores Darwin's notions about evolution extended to the interaction of animals and plants over time to their mutual and long-term benefit.