This article is taken from the December-January 2025 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £10.

---

One of the most underrated American authors of the 20th century is Rex Stout, creator of Nero Wolfe and a canon of some three dozen mystery stories featuring the super-sized sleuth. Set in mid-century, mid-town New York, Wolfe lives in servant-supplied luxury, eschewing society in favour of his gourmet kitchen, his library and his collection of orchids.

It is this latter affectation that I think makes Stout’s creation most interesting, and which sets him apart from other fictional heroes of the hardboiled detective era. It also places the character firmly in a period which, though strange to us now, would be readily understood by the author’s audience when he introduced Wolfe to the world in 1934.

At that time, the Victorian craze for all things orchidean was still a living memory. Of course, the best 19th century collectors were loath to go plant-hunting themselves. Instead, they sent their agents (rather like Wolfe) to scour the earth for recherché specimens with which to ornament their hothouses. That craze, which became more cut-throat with every passing decade, climaxed in “orchid delirium” as the most fanatical spent their fortunes to find the rarest and finest blooms.

Of course, the Victorians were not the first to fall for the delights of the world’s flora. Tulip mania had been the ruin of many a speculator in Merrie England. The Tulip fixation, that is to say the fascination for the bulb and not for Ms Siddiq, the economic secretary to the Treasury alleged to be economical with her financial declarations, was certainly an insanely overinflated bubble. When inevitably it burst in 1637, Stuart scholars first saw how the madness of crowds ineluctably ends in mendicity for the individual.

But the orchid was not merely the subject for speculation, it was the object of style. Joseph Chamberlain, a swell as well as a statesman, sported the bloom in his buttonhole every day of his adult life (except the day of his third marriage when both he and his bride wore violets). Oscar Wilde wore one, too. An orchid was a statement, and people were prepared to steal to possess one.

Nowadays orchids, particularly the “moth orchid”, are pretty standard in garden centres and there is certainly no shortage of colours. They can, however, be notoriously tricky to keep, being sensitive to temperature, shade and hydration. Yet help for the keen beginner is at hand. The Orchid Society of Great Britain, founded by John Blowers, son of the Duke of Sutherland’s head gardener, have been championing all things orchidaceae since 1951.

The OSGB can be found online and will be happy to guide the amateur. The RHS also supplies a wealth of orchidean knowledge to those in search of it. And, if all else fails, there is my mother, who has an unerring knack of restoring the most ailing orchid to the rudest good health.

It remains a noble ambition to collect and care for rare orchids. The Black Double phalaenopsis, with petals of deepest jet, is an unusual specimen which makes for a chic sympathy offering to anyone in mourning. Rarer still is the Ghost orchid (Dendrophylax Lindenii) whose lack of any leaves and stem pigmentation lends to its stark white flowers the unearthly appearance of floating unsupported in the ether.

The Queen of Sheba (Theylmitra Variegata), found not in Abyssinia but Western Australia, is a vivid purple, yellow and blue, bursting from the bud with kaleidoscopic colouring. As a threatened species, it is protected from sale so a Dendrobium Burana Sundae or a Cattleya Amazing Thailand may be the best alternative colour match.

Nero Wolfe employed a resident orchidist to tend the 10,000 plants crammed into his Manhattan brownstone’s elaborate greenhouse. It is unlikely that any of us will need our own personal nurse, at least not one for the purpose of watering one’s house plants.