A Brief History of Orchid Cultivation: Understanding the Historical Evolution of Orchid Growing in One Article

Orchidsare one of the oldest flowers in our country. As early as 300 BC, Qu Yuan praisedorchidsin his work Li Sao, and they are also recorded in other ancient texts such as Zuo Zhuan, the Book of Rites and the Records of the Grand Historian. It can be seen that the cultivationof orchidsinour country has a history of at least more than two thousand years.
Works devoted specifically to describingorchidsappeared in our country only after the Southern Song Dynasty; by the Ming Dynasty, the varieties oforchidsamong the people were already very rich, and the physician and pharmacologist Li Shizhen gave a relatively complete account of the naming and classification oforchidsin his monumental work Compendium of Materia Medica.
By the Qing Dynasty, orchid cultivation had developed further; at this time orchid growers emerged in large numbers, accumulated rich experience in orchid cultivation, and produced many specialized works on orchids, which have been handed down to the present day and still have a certain reference value.
Although orchids have a long history, in the old society many precious varieties were almost completely destroyed. After Liberation, because the Party and the government attached importance to greening work, orchid cultivation finally developed relatively quickly.