Of course, from the late 18th well into the 19th centuries, epiphytic orchids were lumped into Epidendrum, a genus established by Linnaeus in 1763. The botanical name, meaning “upon a tree, pear-shaped” stuck for the next 67 years.

But nineteen years before Lindley had named the “very pretty little species”, William Jackson Hooker had established the genus Encyclia in Curtis’s Botanical Magazine. Encyclia sat, mostly unused, until Friedrich Richard Rudolf Schlechter, a German botanist, began examining and sorting through the hundreds of orchids called “epidendrums”.

There is one odd omission in Lindley’s original description of this orchid, but, then again, fragrance seldom counts in botanical descriptions. And it may well be that Lindley did not think to sniff the flowers or perhaps thought he caught a whiff of someone passing by with a cup of cocoa. But this pretty little species has the wonderful warm scent of chocolate.

 

(Compiled from: “Encyclia pyriformis”, W3TROPICOS, Jim Solomon, Missouri Botanical Garden’s VAST nomenclatural database; Botanicus, a web-based encyclopedia of historic botanical literature from the Missouri Botanical Garden Library; and A History of the Orchid, Merle A. Reinikka, Timber Press, Portland OR, 1995)