by Day, Blooms by Night: Blueprints The Double Life of Botanist Charles Lambie
This botanical history post was featured on The Daily Gardener podcast:
July 11, 1941
On this day, the Amarillo Daily News saw fit to illuminate the double life of one Charles Sumner Lambie, a man who spends his daylight hours commanding the rigors of civil engineering in Denver, only to retreat at nightfall into the exotic, humid realm of his orchid sanctuary.
How deliciously contradictory!
Mr. Lambie, I am reliably informed, cultivated his horticultural inclinations in Pittsburgh, where he tended the family garden with what one imagines was youthful exuberance. Upon marrying the apparently patient Margaret McCandless, he proceeded to populate their household with nine children—as if managing such a brood wasn't occupation enough!
As his engineering enterprise flourished, Mrs. Lambie divulged that her husband turned to orchid cultivation as a sanctuary from professional demands.
One cannot help but applaud the irony that Mr. Lambie discovered in his greenhouse pursuit—the man who once suffered the seasonal tortures of hayfever when gardening outdoors now finds himself miraculously unbothered in his artificial Eden.
After cataloguing the various orchid varieties populating Mr. Lambie's collection (which I shall spare you, dear reader, as taxonomic litanies rarely stimulate the imagination), the newspaper revealed the gentleman's fastidious documentation methods with almost voyeuristic detail.
"Mr. Lambie has a card index file ... on each plant.
Here is a simple entry from the card of C. Talisman:
L.O. Talisman: 6 inches, December 1938, Christmas; Winter Bloomer, October to early summer, variable.
Flowers large, Sepals and petals – Light to dark rose. Lip, dark rich crimson;
Throat purple with yellow – gold veins."
One can only marvel at such meticulous record-keeping! Mr. Lambie, it seems, approaches his botanical hobby with the same precision required of his bridges and buildings.
He drapes a protective canopy over his flowering treasures—one imagines them as debutantes at their coming-out ball—and sprays them several times daily, a ritual of devotion if ever there was one.
When business calls Mr. Lambie away, Mrs. Lambie assumes the sacred duty of hydrating these temperamental blooms multiple times daily. One wonders if the Lambie children ever received such attentive ministrations!
As the reporter departed this temple of floriculture, Mrs. Lambie revealed—with what one suspects was carefully orchestrated casualness—a particular orchid of seemingly special significance. This specimen, bestowed upon Mr. Lambie as a subscription bonus from an orchid periodical, bears the name "Charles Lambie Rittenberry" after their grandson.
Mrs. Lambie added, with what the newspaper describes as a smile (though one detects a hint of resigned understanding), that this namesake orchid receives "very careful attention."
Indeed!
How fortunate for young Master Rittenberry to have his legacy secured in such a delicate but enduring form, tended by a grandfather who clearly understands the value of proper documentation and regular misting.
For those among you who cultivate orchids, take note—perhaps your hayfever too might mysteriously vanish upon entering your greenhouse.
And should your professional obligations ever threaten to overwhelm, consider Mr. Lambie's example: retreat into a world of exotic blooms, armed with nothing more than index cards and a spray bottle.
