Orchidelirium and Thievery:
Orchids Inspire Book and Film

Have you read the book The Orchid Thief by Susan Orleans? Maybe you've seen the film based on the book—Adaptation. Orchid thieves take orchid hunting even further—if the book's subtitle is any clue. The full title is The Orchid Thief: A True Story of Beauty and Obsession.

Publisher's Weekly described it this way: "New York journalist Orlean first learned about orchid 'thief' John Laroche by reading a story about him in a local Florida newspaper. He (along with his henchmen, three Seminole Indians) had been taken to court for removing an endangered species of orchid from the state's Fakahatchee Swamp. Orlean hightailed it down to the Sunshine State to investigate and wound up immersing herself in the wacky world of orchid maniacs."

In the Amazon.com review by Barry Trinkle, he explains, "Orchidelirium is the name the Victorians gave to the flower madness that is for botanical collectors the equivalent of gold fever. Wealthy orchid fanatics of that era sent explorers (heavily armed, more to protect themselves against other orchid seekers than against hostile natives or wild animals) to unmapped territories in search of new varieties of Cattleya and Paphiopedilum. As knowledge of the family Orchidaceae grew to encompass the currently more than 60,000 species and over 100,000 hybrids, orchidelirium might have been expected to go the way of Dutch tulip mania. Yet, as journalist Susan Orlean found out, there still exists a vein of orchid madness strong enough to inspire larceny among collectors."

As wild and exciting as it may seem, Wikipedia tells us that "Today, the collecting of orchids in the wild is now banned by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) adopted in 1973. Still some orchids are endangered. Orchid smuggling is thought to contribute to the loss of some species of orchid in the wild."