Discussant: Lorraine Daston (Director emerita, MPIWG)

From the Northern Song onward, scholars identified a particular plant as the lan 蘭 (orchid) mentioned in the Chuci 楚辭 by comparing classical descriptions with its habitat, leaf shape, and fragrance. This identification spread through poetry, horticultural practice, and materia medica writings. Some scholars later recognized that the plant cultivated as lan in Song times differed from the plant called lan in ancient texts. Rather than abandoning the established name, they distinguished between “ancient lan” (gulan 古蘭) and “contemporary lan” (jinlan 今蘭). This distinction allowed the Song lan to retain the classical name and the authority attached to it while marking it as distinct from the ancient lan. Taking the orchid as an object of knowledge, this paper asks how a plant came to be knowable as the orchid in Song China (960–1279). It examines how a plant that had not originally been the referent of the classical name acquired that identity and how this identity endured even after its classical pedigree was called into question. It argues that the orchid became a recognizable and authoritative object of botanical knowledge not through a single act of discovery or correct identification, but through the repeated coordination of classical exegesis, sensory observation, plant comparison, horticultural practice, literary production, and materia medica writing. The history of the orchid thus reveals that botanical knowledge in Song China was jointly produced through textual and material practices, classical authority and empirical observation, and local knowledge and literati culture.