The Florilegium
Print detail — every line holds at full size

The Orchid

The Lady of the Night

Brassavola digbyana

It opens white at dusk and perfumes an entire glasshouse by midnight.

Book
Edwards’s Botanical Register
Plate
Pl. 53
Artist
for John Lindley, Edwards’s Botanical Register
Date
1846
Held by
Wikimedia Commons
Pl. 53Brassavola digbyana

Format

The full-resolution scan, colour-managed to the source — yours to print, study, and explore, down to the stipple.

Size

$29.00

The story

The lip of this flower is fringed like torn lace, and at dusk it releases a citrus perfume strong enough to carry across a large glasshouse — the fringe and the scent both aimed at a night-flying moth with a very long tongue. It has since been bred into a great many of the large modern hybrids, so a version of this fringe is in half the orchids sold today. Every corsage orchid in the world is partly descended from this drawing's subject.

See it on your wall

The garden, brought indoors

The Lady of the Night printed large and framed, hung in rooms like yours. Every edition ships ready to become the piece the room is built around.

The Lady of the Night framed on the wall
The Lady of the Night framed on the wall
The Lady of the Night framed on the wall
The Lady of the Night framed on the wall

About this reproduction

  • A faithful reproduction of a public-domain plate held by Wikimedia Commons — the work is centuries out of copyright (1846).
  • Printed to order on archival cotton-rag stock, pigment inks rated 100+ years (inscribed pieces and atelier bouquets are set by hand and printed to order).
  • Colour-managed to the source scan: the hand-colour is the colourist’s, not ours. We correct nothing and invent nothing.
  • Ships in 5–10 business days, rolled in a heavy-wall tube (framed pieces ship flat-packed).
  • If it arrives less than perfect, we reprint or refund — your choice.

Why our plates cost more than a poster: we print from the highest-resolution scans in existence, at sizes where the engraving itself becomes visible — the stipple that makes a petal look soft, the wash of the hand-colourist, the veins of the leaf — on stock made to outlive its owner. A poster reproduces the picture. This reproduces the plate.

From the same hand

The Mexican Lady’s Slipper — Edwards’s Botanical Register, for John Lindley, Edwards’s Botanical Register, 1846

1846

The Mexican Lady’s Slipper

The largest slipper orchid in the Americas, and one of the hardest to keep alive.

Pl. 58Cypripedium irapeanum
The Tulip Orchid — Edwards’s Botanical Register, for John Lindley, Edwards’s Botanical Register, 1844

1844

The Tulip Orchid

A cupped flower with a loose figure rocking inside it — the “cradle orchid.”

Pl. 63Anguloa clowesii
The Bucket Orchid — Edwards’s Botanical Register, for John Lindley, Edwards’s Botanical Register, 1836

1836

The Bucket Orchid

It fills a bucket with its own fluid and drops the bee in.

Pl. 1841Coryanthes macrantha