https://queenslandorchid.wordpress.com/2016/10/29/variegated-oriental-cymbidiums/
Longitudinally, orchids have been cultivated far longer and earlier in the East than in the West. They have been recorded in various documents from the ancient history in China, including herbal medicine books more than three thousand years ago, the “Book of Changes” 易經 dating back to the first millennium BC, and the first manuscript to deal with botany in its entirety around 300 BC, as well as the oldest Chinese dictionary entitled “Shuo Wen Jie Tzi” 說文解字 (edited by Xu Shen, a famous Chinese scholar during the middle part of the Eastern Han Dynasty from 25 AD to 220 AD), in which the Chinese word 蘭 encapsulates perfumed plants prominently represented by orchids, especially the Cymbidium orchid, which is one of the classic flowers of Chinese and Japanese horticulture and art.
The East-West divide rests not solely in the encounters, utilizations and documentations of endemic orchid species but also in the morphological differences between Occidental and Oriental Cymbidiums, accentuated and consolidated over epochs, dynasties and generations by sociocultural forces more than by geographical factors. In other words, whilst globalization has distributed many orchid genera and species far and wide, the largest cultural (and horticultural) divide between the East and West in the cultivation of orchids nowadays probably lies in the Cymbidieae tribe. The typically showy and colourful hybrid Cymbidiums that appeal to Western growers are plants from (sub)tropical Asia with green leaves and little or no fragrance. In contrast, the petite and subdued Cymbidiums preferred and coveted by Eastern growers are the fragrant temperate species with foliage and floral chimerisms that arise from spontaneous natural variants and hybrids.
