{"id":13349,"date":"2012-10-23T05:45:23","date_gmt":"2012-10-23T13:45:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/?p=13349"},"modified":"2013-01-07T09:49:17","modified_gmt":"2013-01-07T17:49:17","slug":"orchid-mania-dates-to-roman-empire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/2012\/10\/23\/orchid-mania-dates-to-roman-empire\/","title":{"rendered":"Orchid Mania Dates to Roman Empire"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.wired.com\/wiredscience\/2012\/10\/roman-orchids\/\" target=\"_blank\">A new study reveals that the Ancient Romans were orchid lovers.<\/a> Botanists at Italy&#8217;s Roma Tre University have assembled a detailed database identifying plants in old Roman carvings, paintings, and textiles. Their work shows that Mediterranean orchid species were Roman favorites. This pushes back the earliest orchid representations in Western art from the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Renaissance\" target=\"_blank\">Renaissance<\/a> to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/history\/historic_figures\/caesar_julius.shtml\" target=\"_blank\">Julius Caesar<\/a>, who built temples adorned with orchid carvings over 2000 years ago.<\/p>\n<p>Trying to identify flower species in ancient art isn&#8217;t easy. Matching stylized depictions to real plants is painstaking work, which is why this hadn&#8217;t been discovered until now. The orchid&#8217;s adoration in Ancient Rome may explain its disappearance from Western art for a millennium. In the 3rd and 4th centuries, early Christians associated orchids with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/history\/ancient\/romans\/roman_religion_gallery.shtml\" target=\"_blank\">Ancient Rome&#8217;s paganism<\/a>. They banished orchid art until the 15th century. Kristin Nicole Edrington, an orchid jewelry specialist in Alexandria, Virginia, notes that this new study shows \u201cjust how much history is tied up with this flower\u2026. It shows up in all kinds of places you might not expect it.\u201d Varieties depicted in Ancient Rome included <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/2009\/06\/21\/orchis\/\">Orchis<\/a>, Spiranthes, and Cephalanthera.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A new study reveals that the Ancient Romans were orchid lovers. Botanists at Italy&#8217;s Roma Tre University have assembled a detailed database identifying plants in old Roman carvings, paintings, and textiles. Their work shows that Mediterranean orchid species were Roman favorites. This pushes back the earliest orchid representations in Western art from the Renaissance to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-in-the-news","category-misc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13349"}],"version-history":[{"count":25,"href":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13349\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13375,"href":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13349\/revisions\/13375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}