Rootless Orchids Could Travel: Transplanting a Chinese plant iconography in the early modern world

This chapter examines the early modern itineraries and transcultural lives of ‘rootless orchids’ (Ch. wugen lan 無根蘭 or lugen lan 露根蘭), a particular Chinese plant iconography that depicts soilless orchids with exposed roots. ‘Rootless orchids’ originated in Chinese ink paintings and were associated with political and loyalist enthusiasm for Confucian ideology. This study explores the iconography’s varied forms, functions, and receptions in the contexts of interregional interactions between China and Korea from the seventeenth through the late nineteenth century, as well as Sino-European encounters in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It scrutinises ink paintings by the late Ming envoy Cheng Long (?–1637), the Korean scholar-officials Gang Sehwang (1713–1791) and Kim Jeonghui (1786–1856), and the Korean royal in-laws and politicians Yi Haeung (1821–1898) and Min Yeongik (1860–1914). It also discusses different perceptions of the ‘rootless’ in the scientific and aesthetic traditions of botanical illustrations in early modern China and Europe.