Cymbidium

It’s not nearly so easy to photograph the little flowers of winter as it is the fulsome ones of summer. My efforts at making a snowdrop look seductive end with too much out of focus background. Even had I the capability and the right lens I find, I admit, much-magnified flowers, routine for cover shots of The Garden, a bit of a cheat.

So Flower of the Month it is for December – and a flower that lasts not just a month, but two or three. Cymbidiums (and other orchids) have a quality no other flower offers: theatre from the first appearance of an unmistakeable flower-stalk, low among the leaves, to its slow lengthening, the first sight of buds, their accelerating detachment, unfurling and fattening, the first hint of coming colour, the flower appearing and expanding, the stalk, finding its way among the rigid leaves, taking up its final place and the flowers filling with sticky juice…… it deserves a musical accompaniment all the way.

Not every plant flourishes like the one in my picture. I wish I could tell you its name, but the label is lost and my memory dim. It has certainly lived here for thirty years.

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