• Introduction

• John Day and his scrapbooks

• Conserving orchids

• Investigating orchids

• Orchid collecting - then and now

• Orchids from the New World tropics

• Orchids of the mysterious East

• Orchids out of Africa

Sophronitis coccinea

Few plants can have excited more interest in Victorian society than the orchids. With flowers either curious or elegant, so diverse in size, shape and hue, tropical orchids met people’s cravings for the exotic. The tales of their collectors added to their fascination; stories of journeys to far-off lands; of hardships and dangers; of challenges met and overcome; of strange but enchanting plants and animals.

John Day (1824 – 1888) was a prominent orchid grower and enthusiast of the time. He created a series of over fifty scrapbooks containing nearly three thousand exquisitely detailed drawings and watercolours of these plants over a quarter of a century. For some 40 years Day acquired newly collected plants, cultivated them in his own glasshouses and brought many into flower for the first time in this country. For him, as for many Victorians, these astonishing plants undoubtedly came to represent a vision of paradise.

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