The Orchid Thief

This chapter explains how Laroche came to work for the Seminole Tribe in Florida. A series of misfortunes in the early 1990s brought his business to a halt. A car crash that took the life of his mother injured both Laroche and his wife; soon after they recovered, they separated. A bad batch of fungicide killed many of his plants, and the rest were destroyed during the flooding and destruction caused by Hurricane Andrew in 1992. The Seminole Tribe already owned several businesses, and the extensive land they owned made running a nursery a good fit. The land contained many species of plants native to Florida, which developers often purchased for landscaping. Laroche got the job of managing the nursery.

Laroche’s plans included setting up a lab at the nursery to propagate many species in the hopes that one or two would hit it big and become popular. By cloning a popular species, he figured, they could make lots of money. He thus put a lot of time and effort into that. The other thing he focused on was the law as it pertained to Indigenous peoples. He knew that their use of plants and animals was often exempt from state and federal laws—such as those protecting endangered species—on cultural and religious grounds. He found court cases that backed this up and devised a plan to take protected orchids from Seminole land.

In particular, he focused on a delicate white orchid commonly called the “ghost orchid.” Laroche’s vision was to master the cloning and cultivation of these flowers and strike it rich. As an altruistic twist, he hoped to then have the laws changed to close loopholes that allowed people like him to remove endangered plants, thereby both protecting the plants and becoming a revered figure.

After explaining the above backstory, the author then relates part of a day she spent with Laroche shortly after his court hearing. They met at the Seminole nursery, which Orlean hoped to get a tour of, but Laroche claimed to have urgent business when she arrived. When Hurricane Andrew had forced him out of business, he had given some of his remaining plants to a friend and he now wanted to get them back. Together they drove in the van to the friend’s nursery, where Laroche argued a bit with his friend over the plants. The latter claimed that too much time had passed and he now felt connected to the plants. He refused to give them back. They chatted some more and when asked if he was currently collecting anything, Laroche said no, that he had to be careful. Just being there stirred up the old feelings of obsession.

Chapter 3 is about Orlean’s visit to the Fakahatchee Strand, the swampy preserve where the ghost orchids can be found. She wanted to see what had caused Laroche’s obsession to such a degree that he broke the law. Since he was barred from the reserve by the judge, she enlisted the help of a park ranger to lead her into the swamp. Orlean quotes from the old records of past visitors and explorers of the swamp, who describe it as teeming with life but forbidding in its conditions. One explorer wrote in his diary of a partner on the trek who suddenly started crying: “he could not tell us why he was just plain scared” (36).

Orlean faced her own challenges in the Fakahatchee. Her legs and head ached, her skin was sticky from the humid heat, and the mud gripped her boots with force. Finally, after hiking for most of the day, she and the ranger, Tony, saw a ghost orchid. The plant itself, she writes, is “nothing but roots, a tangle of flat green roots about the width of linguine, wrapped around a tree” (39). That’s all they saw, as the plant had stopped blooming for the year. Orlean had heard that the flower is especially beautiful, with its ghostly white color and dangling lip longer than most orchids, but she began to wonder if it was itself a ghost—an elusive figure that existed only in tall tales.

Orlean delves into the scientific side of orchids, describing their origins, evolution, and morphology. She also explains their particular ability to thrive for so long. They are an ancient plant, going back millions of years, and have evolved to increase their likelihood of survival. Since they are not self-pollinating, like many plants, they must rely on external means of pollination—other living creatures or the wind. Orchids have survived by making themselves “irresistible” to insects, often evolving to look “so much like their favorite insects that the insect mistakes them for kin” (45). Others mimic the prey of their favorite insects. This ensures their pollination.

Orchids first appeared in tropical areas but now grow worldwide. Some grow in soil, while others grow attached to rocks or trees. The latter are called epiphytes; they are not parasitic—they just get their nutrients and water above the ground, which, in a thick jungle area, has lots of competition from other plants. Orchids grow very slowly, taking seven years to bloom after a seed is pollinated. Their flowers have three petals, which, in most orchids, form what is often described as a pronounced “lip.” They are varied and unusual, with looks resembling anything from a dog to an octopus to a person’s nose, according to Orlean. Something about them tends to induce obsession in certain people: People often described to the author a feeling of being bitten by a collecting bug that is similar to an addiction.