The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean

Okay, I read The Library Book by Susan Orlean a few years ago and was obsessed with it. There is a prompt in this year's Pop Sugar Reading Challenge about a book where gardening is central to the plot, so The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean seemed like a great pick to fulfill that prompt based on my past success with Orlean. 

In this book, Orlean follows an eccentric man named John Laroche in his search for an elusive flower called the ghost orchid. Along the way, she learns about the swamps of Florida, the ins and outs of international plant (and animal) smuggling, and how the niche community of orchid growers, buyers, and sellers is absolutely batshit.

Look, Orlean gave it away. She found Laroche to be a character of fascination and interest.

Many things he said were incredible or staggering or cracked or improbable, but they were never boring. The current of his mind and behavior was more riptide than rivulet. I didn’t care all that much whether what he said was true or not; I just found the flow irresistible. (page 33)

I did not. 

Here's why I sort of enjoyed this book. Let's say I wanted to fall asleep VERY QUICKLY. All I had to do was open this book and I would be sound asleep within three pages. Look, I know a lot of people who pay a lot of money on supplements and other sleep aids. Let me suggest that if you are having trouble sleeping, get yourself a copy of this book!

Also, I did find the orchid history and the history of this area of Florida to be somewhat interesting. So. You know. Do what you will this information. 

2/5 stars - zzzzzzz (I found myself yawning AS I WAS WRITING THIS)

Lines of note:

No one knows whether orchids evolved to complement insects or whether the orchids evolved first, or whether somehow these two life forms evolved simultaneously, which might explain how two totally different living things came to depend on each other. The harmony between an orchid and its pollinator is so perfect that it is kind of eerie. Darwin loved studying orchids. In his writings he often described them as “my beloved Orchids” and was so certain that they were the pinnacle of evolutionary transformation that he once wrote that it would be “incredibly monstrous to look at an Orchid as having been created as we now see it.” (page 55)

I guess I just thought Darwin was the bird guy. 

Orchids are one of the few things in the world that can live forever. Cultivated orchids that aren’t killed by their owners can outlive their owners and even generations of owners. Many people who collect orchids designate an orchid heir in their wills, because they know the plants will outlast them. (page 58)

Like parrots!

Each time a hurricane hits Florida, botanists wonder what new orchids might have come in with it. At the moment, they are waiting to see what was blown in by Hurricane Andrew. They will know the answer around the seventh anniversary of the storm, when the seeds that landed will have sprouted and grown. (page 59)

FASCINATING. The world is a crazy place. 

Currently, the international trade in orchids is more than $10 billion a year, and some individual rare plants have sold for more than twenty-five thousand dollars. (page 60)

Egads. And here I am without a single desire to be part of this multi-billion dollar industry. 

Beauty can be painfully tantalizing, but orchids are not simply beautiful. Many are strange-looking or bizarre, and all of them are ugly when they aren’t flowering. They are ancient, intricate living things that have adapted to every environment on earth. They have outlived dinosaurs; they might outlive human beings. They can be hybridized, mutated, crossbred, and cloned. They are at once architectural and fanciful and tough and dainty, a jewel of a flower on a haystack of a plant. (page 63)

This. I want more on this. What orchid has lived since the time of dinosaurs? I need more information!

...a great number of the animals and plants that are brought to Florida are illegal to collect, transport, and trade. The Port of Miami is one of the biggest points of entry for smuggled plants and animals in the country. (page 226)

Huh. Who knew? 

Things I looked up:

Sometimes this kind of story turns out to be something more, some glimpse of life that expands like those Japanese paper balls you drop in water and then after a moment they bloom into flowers (page 5)

Apparently these are magic water blossoms. It seems like it actually might be magic? (Also, I watched these videos too long.)

pink Zairean hot peppers shaped like penises (page 27) - It's called a peter pepper. I don't know if it really looks like that much like a dick? 

chikee huts (page 31) - a traditional open-sided shelter with a palm-thatch roof and a raised cypress wood platform. Developed by the Seminole and Miccosukee tribes of Florida, these highly durable, wind-resistant structures provide natural cooling in humid climates.

sneezeweed (page 32) - large, daisylike, yellow flowering perennial - Sneezeweed flowers in late summer or fall. The common name is based on the former use of its dried leaves in making snuff, inhaled to cause sneezing that would supposedly rid the body of evil spirits. It grows natively across most of the United States, southern Canada, and Central America. It thrives in low, damp environments such as wet prairies, meadows, streambanks, marsh edges, and roadside ditches

pennywort (page 32) - Hydrocotyle, also called floating pennywort, water pennywort, dollar weed, marsh penny, thick-leaved pennywort and white rot, is a genus of prostrate, perennial aquatic or semi-aquatic plants

beauty-berry (page 42) - a woody, deciduous, perennial shrub that produces showy purple fruits in the fall.

yellow-eyed grass (page 42) - a perennial herb that naturally grows in moist environments

camphor weed (page 42) - an aromatic, annual to biennial herbaceous shrub. Its copious blooms consist of bright yellow ray florets and vivid yellow to orange disk florets. 

The great Victorian-era orchid hunter William Arnold drowned on a collecting expedition on the Orinoco River, The orchid hunter Schroeder, a contemporary of Arnold’s, fell to his death while hunting in Sierra Leone. The hunter Falkenberg was also lost, while orchid hunting in Panama. David Bowman died of dysentery in Bogota. The hunter Klabock was murdered in Mexico. Brown was killed in Madagascar. Endres was shot dead in Rio Hacha. Gustave Wallis died of fever in Ecuador. Digance was gunned down by locals in Brazil. Osmers vanished without a trace in Asia. The linguist and plant collector Augustus Margary survived toothache, rheumatism, pleurisy, and dysentery while sailing the Yangtze only to be murdered when he completed his mission and traveled beyond Bhamo. (page 65)

cattleyas (page 69 and then over and over and over again) - a genus of orchids from Costa Rica south to Argentina

Once, just for fun, Paxton and the Bachelor Duke dressed Paxton’s seven-year-old daughter, Annie, in a fairy costume and stood her up on one of the giant lily pads floating in the pond and took a picture. The image of Annie Paxton standing on the lily was a sensation. (page 86) - True story. Here's the photo. 

Photo taken in Adelaide Botanic Gardens 1910

, State Library of South Australia

Carl Fisher, a Detroit automobile mogul who came to Florida right after World War I and poured three million cubic yards of sand onto an expanse of mangrove swamp and created Miami Beach. (page 149) - Why didn't she write the book about this guy?

In 1858 Secretary of War Jefferson Davis admitted that the Seminoles had “baffled the energetic efforts of our army to effect their subjugation and removal.” Because they never surrendered, the Florida Seminoles came to refer to themselves as the Unconquered. To this day their descendants have never signed a peace treaty with the United States. (page 255) - The things you learn. I had no idea. 

testicular defect known as cryptorchidism (page 289) - undescended testicle

Hat mentions (why hats?):

Birders used to come from as far away as Cuba and leave with enough plumes to decorate thousands of ladies’ hats (page 41) - See a much better book than this book about thieving in The Feather Thief about this topic. 

four men in sun hats (page 95)

Inspectors have found falcons hidden in milk cartons, parakeets tucked in hair curlers, monkeys under people’s hats. (page 226)

He was wearing droopy camouflage pants, a Miami Hurricanes hat, and a Chicago Blackhawks T-shirt with team logo of an Indian chief. (page 269)

He was wearing a Miami Hurricanes hat, a pair of thin corduroy pants, a flimsy short-sleeved shirt, and aerobics shoes. (page 335)

A hundred years ago plume hunters would come here and gather enough feathers to decorate ten thousand fashionable ladies’ hats. (page 346)

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Do you have any orchids? Do you want to?