Zhào Shígēng 趙時庚
Late-Southern-Sòng imperial-clansman and orchid-connoisseur, hào Dànzhāi 澹齋. A ninth-generation descendant of Wèi Wáng Tíngmeí 魏王廷美 (Sòng Tàizǔ’s younger brother) — inferable from the Shí 時 generation-character in his name. Native of Zhāngzhōu 漳州 (Fújiàn). His career and exact lifedates are not documented; his father was an Cháoyì láng (court-discussion gentleman, a junior central office) who had served as prefect of Nánkāng 南康.
His one surviving work, the Jīnzhāng lánpǔ 金漳蘭譜 (KR3i0036) — the first systematic Chinese monograph on the orchid (specifically Cymbidium species, the Chinese garden-orchid) — is dated by its self-preface to Shàodìng guǐsì (1233). The preface relates that Zhào had begun collecting and ranking orchid varieties from his early childhood at his father’s Zhāngzhōu residence (which featured a famous orchid-garden, the Yúndāng shìjiè 篔簹世界 pavilion), and that he had developed the ranking framework over some thirty years (fl. therefore c. 1203–1233).