Orchids: Out of the Dark

The orchid brought out of the dark, one light at a time.Seventy-one large plates work through the most various flower there is: a moth orchid's white face emerging from black, a slipper orchid's pouch catching a single shaft, a Dracula's two eye-like markings and three long tails, a spider orchid trailing to points. Between the portraits, the things an orchid is actually built from - the column with its pollinia still capped, the twisted ovary that turns the flower upside down as it opens, aerial roots hanging in silver.Beside each plate sits a short note on what the eye is looking at - why the lip is a landing platform, why a peloric flower grows two extra lips instead of petals, why a seed pod holds dust rather than seeds. Enough to reward a second pass, never enough to interrupt the picture.Every picture runs to the edge of the page. Made as an object first: a large, quiet, full-colour volume for a table, a shelf or a gift, and for anyone who grows them, kills them, and buys another.The plates in this volume are AI-generated imagery, produced, edited, sequenced and annotated by Cedar Pine Editions.