The Orchid Thief

This chapter describes an orchid show in Fort Lauderdale that Laroche invited the author to. Laroche arrived after Orlean. He entered the parking lot through the exit and parked his van where parking was prohibited. She paid for both of their tickets after he tried, and failed, to get them in for free.

Inside the auditorium, they went from table to table, admiring the various orchids. One with dozens of burgundy spots on the flower Laroche likened to “an explosion in a paint factory” (89). They had quirky names like Markie Pooh and Dee Dee’s Fat Lip. Some are named for their appearance; others are named for celebrities. There is, for example, a Jackie Kennedy orchid and one called Elizabeth’s Eyes, named for Elizabeth Taylor.

Laroche commented on each table they visited, describing the orchids’ features and telling stories from his days in the business. One room was full of cloned orchids, a practice that Orlean explains began in France in the late 1950s. Cells from an actively growing part of the plant are provided with hormones and chemicals to get them to multiply. Then they are separated and placed in a growth medium, where they eventually mature into a full plant—all exact replicas of the original from which the cells were taken. This helped make collecting more widespread and less expensive, though the best orchids still fetch a hefty price.

Laroche drew attention from many people. He said the wrong things, offending people, like blurting out that one seller’s plants looked terrible and were probably dying. In addition, he looked odd: rail thin and pale, with missing teeth. Still, people took to him. Orlean was surprised how people were drawn to him despite his oddities and disagreeable ways. She thought it might be “because he could be as earnest about their concerns as he was about his own, and because his self-confidence was contagious” (98). She describes him engaging another visitor at the show who was admiring a rather ugly-looking orchid. Laroche told the woman that she loved it in spite of its ugliness because it was part of the “sickness” of being captivated by orchids. He meant it genuinely and commiserated with her plight. 

Chapter 7 is largely about the history of the Fakahatchee Strand. Orlean relates this while discussing a trip she made there to see some of the orchids taken by Laroche that had been returned to their natural habitat. Some had died, but the remaining orchids had been brought back to the swamp and glued onto trees. They were hardier than they looked and generally did fine afterward.

Much of Florida’s flora, Orlean notes, is tough—even “invincible.” Nonnative species did well there, totaling about a quarter of all the state’s plants. Sometimes such plants did too well and efforts to eradicate them failed. Driving the long way to the Fakahatchee on small roads, Orlean encounters almost no one else: virtually no one out walking and few other cars. The vast, empty land she passed made the world feel lonely. Maybe people were passionate collectors, she surmised, because “it whittles the world down to a more manageable size” (109).

Orlean writes that Florida has seen many land scams over the years. One of the more infamous scams in the 20th century led to the creation of the Fakahatchee Strand State Preserve. In the 1940s, the Fakahatchee was logged for cypress trees, which were virtually cleared out by the early 1950s. The company that owned the land sold 75,000 acres to the Gulf American Corporation, owned by Julius and Leonard Rosen. The Rosens created two sections from the land, called Golden Gate Estates and Remuda Ranch Grants, and peddled the property through largely dubious means. Most people, they hoped, would buy the land sight unseen so they would not have an opportunity to raise questions. The Rosens touted the area as well-developed, but it was largely barren and isolated. Those who did visit were subject to company tactics like bugging their hotel rooms to learn about their concerns and then try to preemptively counter them.

In 1967, Gulf American was accused by the state of fraud in its land sales, and the company pleaded guilty. Soon afterward, the Rosens sold Gulf American to another company, which continued to sell the properties until it went bankrupt in the mid-1970s. As part of a settlement with the state, almost 10,000 acres of land in the Fakahatchee were donated to Florida, which also purchased some of the lots that were privately owned. This would become the Fakahatchee Strand State Preserve.

When Orlean arrived at the preserve, she was led to see the orchids by a park ranger. They were accompanied by two men Orlean describes as “giants,” who turned out to be convicts in a work-release program. As anxious as Orlean was about the swamp—its heat and muck and creatures—the two men were even more anxious. The ranger explained that they were terrified of encountering snakes in the water, and were only mollified when she gave them machetes with which to hack at anything that moved.