The Garden History Blog

Orchis italica © mick_photo, CC BY-NC 4.0

Look at almost any website  about orchids and you’ll discover that there is a Greek myth which explains how they came into being and how they got their name.  The myth tells of  Orchis, the son of a satyr and a nymph, who clearly inherited some of his father’s libidinous behaviour. He is said to have assaulted or even raped a priestess of Dionysus, the god of wine.  The god took his revenge by having Orchis torn apart by wild beasts and then scattering the bits to the four winds.  `His father was obviously distraught and begged for the gods to bring him back to life. In vain. However they did agree to transform each of the bits of his body into a flower which is named after him – in other words  they became orchids.   Sounds convincing doesn’t it – not very nice but then nobody’s ever claimed that Greek myths were  pleasant!

There’s only one problem with the story….

Any idea which orchid this is? Orchis certainly would’t have known it.

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Camellia Francofurtensis                                          a hybrid created by Jacob Rinz

In the spring of 1829 a 20 year old trainee gardener from Frankfurt came to  Britain to visit gardens and nurseries. He  met John Claudius Loudon, the garden writer who recommended places to visit and then asked  him to write an account of his trip for the Gardener’s Magazine.

His views give an interesting insight into what was going on in commercial nurseries and several large estates around the country, and the  trip also seems to have been quite influential in his later career back in Germany

So over to Jacob Rinz…

Rinzia orientalis, named after Rinz and his father 

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A crowned Saracen’s head, the crest of the Barons Willoughby de Eresby

I was listening to Radio 3’s Composer of the Week recently where the subject was Thomas Linley,  an English contemporary of Mozart I’d never heard of.  The music was impressive but  then I caught mention of a visit that Linley  paid to Grimsthorpe Castle in Lincolnshire in 1779 which ended in tragedy.  [More on that below]

It set me thinking about my own visits there and spurred me to write this post which I’ve been promising to do ever  since I included an amusing account of a visit to the ducal owner of Grimsthorpe in a much earlier post…

[as usual the photos are mine unless otherwise acknowledged]

The North front of Grimsthorpe Castle, designed by Sir John Vanbrugh

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