Coffee Table Book of: Orchids (Paperback)

Description

Coffee Table Book of: Orchids is a large format book of orchids brought out of the dark, one light at a time, printed edge to edge in colour.

Its large plates work through the most varied flower there is: a moth orchid’s white face emerging from black, a slipper orchid’s pouch catching a single shaft of light, a Dracula’s two eye-like markings and three long tails, a spider orchid trailing to points. Between the portraits come the parts 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.

Short notes run beside the plates 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.

Made as an object first: a large, quiet, full-colour volume for a table, a shelf or a gift, and for anyone who grows orchids, loses one now and then, and buys another.

Printed in full colour on heavy 150gsm coated paper at 216 x 279 mm (8.5 x 11 inches), as a paperback.