The Orchid Thief

This chapter focuses on the serious problem of plant theft in south Florida. During her stay there, Orlean began collecting news stories of them, and she recounts a list of larcenies involving orchids, palms, ferns, and other plants. It made her realize that Laroche’s alleged theft “was exceptional but not unrivaled” (157).

She tells the story of Savilla Quick, a woman she met through Martin Motes. After meeting Motes with Tom Fennell, Orlean attended one of his lectures, and it was there he introduced her to Quick, who was acknowledged to be a whiz with ghost orchids. Quick invited Orlean to her home to see some, which excited the author greatly as, until then, the orchids had eluded her. It turned out that none of Quick’s ghost orchids were flowering just then, either, so Orlean’s quest to see a flower remained unfulfilled.

During her visit, Quick told the author of a theft that had occurred at her home sometime earlier. A man she met at a flower show came to her home to look at her orchids, and she agreed to sell him a seedpod from a ghost orchid when it had developed. A few days later, her ghost orchids with seedpods were stolen. Just after that, someone broke into her greenhouse and stole hundreds of her best plants. She only heard from the man a couple more times, but when she saw him later at another flower show, he had greatly changed his appearance and he avoided her. She suspected he was the thief but had no proof.

One of the biggest and most famous plant thefts involved a well-known orchid grower named Bob Fuchs. In 1990, someone stole $150,000 of his valuable orchids, many of which had won prizes. Fuchs came from a family of growers but originally went into teaching. Then he won the 1984 grand champion award at the Miami World Orchid Conference for one of his vandas, and he quit teaching to work in flowers full-time.

There was rivalry between Fuchs and another grower, Frank Smith, because Smith had helped block Fuchs’s application to become an orchid judge, a highly- coveted position. After Fuchs’s orchids were stolen, a buyer noticed a beautiful variety at Smith’s greenhouse, which he later saw in a Fuchs catalog. Thinking it was too rare an orchid to be developed by both, he contacted the authorities, who searched Smith’s greenhouse but found nothing. Smith later received threatening phone calls and suspected Fuchs. Smith pressed charges, but Fuchs was acquitted in court. Neither the theft nor the source of the phone calls was ever solved.

This chapter is about the trade in smuggling live plants and animals into Florida, as well as smuggling in general. As Orlean puts it, “Things disappear all the time in Florida, but they show up all the time, too” (184).

The Port of Miami is a central node in the smuggling circuit, and people have tried to hide all kinds of reptiles, monkeys, and plants in their clothing and luggage. A worldwide attempt to address this issue culminated in the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), a treaty that over 100 countries have adopted. This bans or limits international trade in all things from the wild. While the idea is a noble one, in practice CITES has failings and thus is criticized even by environmentalists. When land is bought up and developed, for example, everything on it might be destroyed because CITES forbids plants or animals to be removed first. Orchid hunters and others argue that rescuing orchids and trading them to growers, who can then clone them, would help protect the plants.

Orlean wanted to talk with an international orchid smuggler, and many people she spoke to suggested she meet Lee Moore—known as “the Adventurer.” Moore was from a famous political family. When he was young, they moved to Florida, which he took to immediately, exploring the swamps and capturing snakes to sell. He started his travels right after high school, when he drove to Central America. He wanted to discover new plants and started collecting plants in the wild in the 1960s. Soon he branched into smuggling art as well, but that became too difficult when the authorities cracked down, so he returned his focus to plants.

While awaiting his latest trial for smuggling, he had taken a job selling plants to nurseries. He would load up his truck and head out on the road like an itinerant salesman. He regretted the fact that his past smuggling had not been as profitable as it could have been—he should have made millions, he insisted. His life had been full of challenges, not just in trying to elude the authorities but also in physical hardship and loss, which brought twinges of regret, but Orlean surmises that he would never have been satisfied living an average life.