The illustrated history of cultivating tropical orchids in Europe can be traced back to a woodcut illustrating  "Epidendron Corassavicium folio crasso Sulcato" on page 207 in the book titled  Paradisus Batavus, etc. - written by the Dutch botanist Paul Herman. 

    The illustration was cut after a living specimen imported from Curaçao (Curassavicum  in Latin; in the caption of the woodcut the spelling is Corassavicium) presumably in the last quarter of the XVIIth century and in Europe this orchid flowered for the first time in The Netherlands, in the collection of Mynheer Casper Fagel (1634 - 1685).

    Linnaeus (Carl von Linné 1707-1778) in the first edition of his epochal Species Plantarum published in 1753 re-named the plant to Epidendrum nodosum.

    In 1831 John Lindley (1799-1865) transferred Epidendrum nodosum to the genus Brassavola (R. Brown 1813), dedicated to Signore Antonio Musa Brassavola, Venetian nobleman and Professor of Logics, Physics and Medicine at Ferrara, Italy. Since then the generic name  Brassavola remained the valid generic name, reserved for this orchid genus in spite of the fact that M. Adanson already used it before, for a genus in Compositae - the sunflower family.

        Therefore, the currently accepted species name of this still popular orchid is Brassavola nodosa (L.) Lindley (1831.)

   Its natural habitats range from Mexico to Panama and Venezuela. Brassavola nodosa is a lowland species, occuring elevations from sea level - where it often grows on the aerial roots of Mangrove trees - to about 500 m altitude, where in hot, dry regions it may grow as an epiphite on large cacti.

    According to one - disputed - explanation, Heinrich Gustav Reichenbach f. (1823 - 1889) named the orchid genus Aa after Mynheer Pieter van der Aa, the printer of Paul Herman's Paradisus Batavus.

   For his capricious temper and biting sarcasm Reichenbach f. was anything but popular among his contemporaries, who accused him that by chosing Aa as a generic name, he wished to be featured forever at the very top of alphabetic listings of orchid genera - or the first author mentioned in books devoted to orchids.

   "Rchb. f." rejected those, in his opinion malevolent accusations and said that he split the Aa concept from the already existing orchid generic name Altensteinia, using the first and the last characters of that name.

  Nice explanation, one might say. Because the Altensteinia genus was dedicated to Consul Stein von Altenstein, son of an old noble family respected for the military records of himself and other male members of this family. In tose times top brass military officers did not take kindly such kinds of toyings with their honored, respercted, widely known family names ...

   Meandering a bit further, figure 73 facing page 209 shows an another, terrestrial orchid named as Orchis Amboinensis floribus altis, Flos Susannae Rumphii, which perhaps is at least as interesting as "Epidendron Corassavicium folio crasso Sulcato" was.

  Apart from the per se interest of the woodcut itself, the acconpanying text written in condensed, "telegraphese" Latin is noteworthy, indeed.

   The highlighted text reproduced in modern typography runs as follows:

   "In hortis nostris nondum floruit, icon vero ad figuram a Clarissimo Rumphio, Plinio Indico dicto, ex Java missam facta est."

In English:

   "In our gardens did not flower yet, image true copy made after the figure sent from Java by Right Honourable Rumphius, called Pliny of India"

   Well, the image came from a place very much farther than India or even Java is, but the fact that this illustration published in the Paradisus Batavus in 1698 is a copy of a picture  from the at that time not even completed, unpublished manuscript of the Amboinsche Kruid-Boek is interesting.

   Because in those times information pertaining to valuable assets of colonies were jealously, strictly guarded secrets. Including botanical works, of course, which did contain information on plants edible or of medicinal value, spices commanding unbelievable prices in Europe, on valuable wood of tropical trees and so on.

   In this case it took no less than thirty-two years until the Dutch East Indies Company on its repeated requests ultimately granted permission in 1736 to Jan Burmann, Professor of Botany at the University of Amsterdam to publish parts of the original the manuscript and the illustrations in print.

   In the Herbarium Amboinense edited by Jan Burmann the same picture appeared in Vol. 5, on p. 286, as tab. 99., published as late as 1747 and the permission is probably attributable to the first part of the senthence, i. e. the plant was not even of horticultural interest.

   However, the pre-Linnean name, i. e. Flower of Rumphius's Susanna hints at something the editor deemed inrteresting enough to mention.

   The story of how that monumental work was born and what was the role of Rumphius's Susanna in it is one of the greatest stories in the history of botany.

   It is true drama - teeming with heroism, romance and moving personal tragedies ...