miércoles, 20 de enero de 2010

Chloraea magellanica in the wild

Laura, una hacker amante de la ciencia ficción que se internó a vivir en los bosques, me envía esta increíble orquídea que capturó con la cámara en su hábitat patagónico, la Chloraea magellanica, "la orquídea porcelana". No es absolutamente maravillosa?


más fotos en su picasa

Kew Gardens

en noviembre visité los jardines de kew gardens, en Londres. Londres había sido la capital de la introducción de especies exóticas de orquídeas: a mediados de 1760 recibían beldades de las indias occidentales (Epidendrum y Vanilla), y reinas asiáticas, como Cymbidium y Phaius tankervillae; una década después, estaban cultivando 15 especies de orquídeas, iniciando no sólo una de las colecciones de plantas exóticas más estupendas del mundo, sino la fiebre progresiva de la orquimanía. La colección de orquídeas, en el invernadero Princess of Wales, es, inevitably, disarming:



en 1919 Virginia Woolf publicó una pieza experimental, "Kew Gardens", que comienza así:

FROM THE OVAL-SHAPED flower-bed there rose perhaps a hundred stalks spreading into heart-shaped or tongue-shaped leaves half way up and unfurling at the tip red or blue or yellow petals marked with spots of colour raised upon the surface; and from the red, blue or yellow gloom of the throat emerged a straight bar, rough with gold dust and slightly clubbed at the end. The petals were voluminous enough to be stirred by the summer breeze, and when they moved, the red, blue and yellow lights passed one over the other, staining an inch of the brown earth beneath with a spot of the most intricate colour. The light fell either upon the smooth, grey back of a pebble, or, the shell of a snail with its brown, circular veins, or falling into a raindrop, it expanded with such intensity of red, blue and yellow the thin walls of water that one expected them to burst and disappear. Instead, the drop was left in a second silver grey once more, and the light now settled upon the flesh of a leaf, revealing the branching thread of fibre beneath the surface, and again it moved on and spread its illumination in the vast green spaces beneath the dome of the heart-shaped and tongue-shaped leaves. Then the breeze stirred rather more briskly overhead and the colour was flashed into the air above, into the eyes of the men and women who walk in Kew Gardens in July.

Naturalmente, entre los objetos mentales de los personajes, hay orquídeas:

"Wherever does one have one's tea?" she asked with the oddest thrill of excitement in her voice, looking vaguely round and letting herself be drawn on down the grass path, trailing her parasol, turning her head this way and that way, forgetting her tea, wishing to go down there and then down there, remembering orchids and cranes among wild flowers, a Chinese pagoda and a crimson crested bird; but he bore her on.

full text

Cricket pollinating an orchid

tengo terriblemente abandonado este blog, pero en los próximos días colgaré las fotos de mis últimas aventuras orquideáceas en los archipiélados panameños, el jardines de londres y el valle de la orotava en las islas canarias. mientras, un poco de soft porn inter species:

no se parece un poco al video xxx de paris hilton?