Oh, for the wings of a butterfly!
A display of orchids at this year’s Chatsworth Flower Show is a chance to glimpse the sort of ‘orchidmania’ that gripped 19th-century plant collectors, reveals Mark Griffiths
ORCHIDS head the bill at the RHS Chatsworth Flower Show in June. An exhibit inspired by Chatsworth’s Great Conservatory will contain an extravaganza of Phalaenopsis, designed by Jonathan Moseley and grown by Double H Nurseries of New Milton in Hampshire. In the Floral Marquee, the highlight will be a display of some 800 orchids from the Duke of Devonshire’s current collection at Chatsworth House—the first time in years that many of these treasures have been shown to the public. There couldn’t be a clearer or more welcome sign that this great house is once more taking an openly active role in orchid cultivation, conservation and connoisseurship.
The association between the two families, Cavendish and Orchidaceae, is one of the most remarkable and influential in our garden history. It began in 1833 when the 6th Duke of Devonshire first saw Psychopsis papilio (aka Oncidium papilio) at a London show. Large, slender-stalked and appearing to float, the flowers of this tropical American orchid are often likened to butterflies, but that’s too gauzily innocent by far. Imagine, rather, some strange forest sprite, carnivalcostumed in auburn-patterned gold with ruffled sleeves, a voluminous skirt and three long antennae arising behind its staring head.
The flower seems animate, alert, mischievous, capable of vegetable voodoo. It certainly cast a spell on the duke. Previously, he had taken little interest in orchids, but now he was smitten. He returned to Chatsworth and, with his head gardener, the brilliant 30-year-old Joseph Paxton, set about collecting this bewitching novelty’s kin.
By 1835, the duke needed more room for his orchids. To house these and other exotics, Paxton designed Chatsworth’s Great Conservatory (often called the Great Stove), which, at the time, was the world’s largest glass building. In it, he pioneered construction techniques that he would magnify in Hyde Park 15 years later in the Crystal Palace.
So far, the duke had bought his orchids from nurseries and plant auctions, often at prices that made ‘tulipmania’ seem tightfisted. Now, with space to fill, he cut out the dealers by sending John Gibson, one of his under-gardeners, on a collecting mission to India. By 1837, when this curious 21 year old returned to England, he had gathered plants of some 80 orchid species, most of them new to science and horticulture.
Charged with their safekeeping, Paxton developed cultivation methods and climatic regimes that would become standard in the great era of glasshouse gardening that followed. The duke’s plants were propagated, bred, exhibited, described and illustrated, so communicating not only with a fast-growing number of private gardeners and specialist nurseries, but also with natural historians. As they studied the diversity of newly discovered exotic orchids and reports of their habitats and habits, these scientists began to ask big questions about classification, ecology and, in Charles Darwin’s case, adaption.
Some call this 19th-century British phenomenon ‘orchidmania’, but it was more rational than any mania and vastly more productive. There’s no question, however, of who led it: the 6th Duke of Devonshire, immortalised in the names of orchids such as Cymbidium devonianum, Dendrobium devonianum and Oncidium cavendishianum and remembered as the pioneer of others such as
Calanthe vestita and Coelogyne cristata.
These last two became beloved winter adornments of the better country houses— a status they enjoyed until the First World War, when glasshouse heating was prohibited and many tender favourites perished in consequence. Miraculously, their original introductions still grow at Chatsworth, having withstood wartime cold and the demolition in 1920 of the by-then sadly depleted Great Conservatory. To these and other vintage survivors, new orchids were added in the past century.
More recently, the 12th Duke of Devonshire has been encouraging research of Chatsworth’s orchid archives and living collection and enlarging the latter, notably by acquiring plants with historic Cavendish connections. A great legacy, national and international, is being restored and redoubled. As a result, many visitors to Chatsworth this June will fall under the orchid’s spell and some, just like the 6th Duke, will find that love at first sight turns into lifelong romance.
The RHS Chatsworth Flower Show, from June 6 to 10 (June 6, RHS members only), in the grounds of Chatsworth House, Bakewell, Derbyshire. For more information and tickets, visit www.rhs. org.uk/chatsworth
‘Imagine a strange forest sprite, carnival costumed in auburn patterned gold