'You can get off alcohol, women, food, drugs and cars but once you
are hooked on orchids you are hooked for life'. So says a New York
orchid grower, and such obsession leads to violent behaviour as we
see in Hansen's spellbinding account, first of an expedition
through steaming Borneo jungles looking for orchid plants and then
of the various plant smugglers, pollen thieves, corrupt judges, ice
cream merchants and fantasists that constitute a large part of the
orchid Mafia. Murder, spying, tenacious courage and vicious
skulduggery all have a place in the world of international plant
politics. 'Big, fat, full and fabulous' an old orchid grower is
heard muttering to herself as she strokes a flower that has
elaborate wings and a scrotum-like pouch 'the most obscene looking
flower of the lot' says Hansen. Make no mistake - orchids are
erotic and so are some of their fanciers. This bizarre
horticultural tale takes us from the banks of the Orinoco to the
hothouses of Kew, meeting en-route outrageous characters such as
Xavier Garreau de Laubresse whose house in a Paris suburb is
converted into a multi-level greenhouse containing vast quantities
of priceless orchids and whose bedroom walls are pitted with bullet
holes - 'An accident - the result of a non-orchid related incident'
he explains. Hong Kong Triads and Columbian drug lords use the
orchid industry to launder drug money and yet, although large sums
of money are involved, we get the impression that it is a passion
for the fragile exquisite bloom and its strange seductive odour
that lies at the heart of even the most horrific behaviour. The
author himself has been a fisherman, wild dog hunter and barber in
Mother Theresa's centre in Calcutta. He has been shipwrecked on an
uninhabited Red Sea island and imprisoned in Egypt and Israel as
well as lecturing in the Smithsonian Institute so he is well
qualified to portray such a weird and wonderful world. He does it
with zest and wit. (Kirkus UK)
A true story of one of the world's strangest plants and humanity's
oddest obsessions: the orchid, brought to book by the author,
traveller and self-confessed orchid obsessive. From the Orinoco
River to the hothouses of Kew, and the clandestine nurseries of
Europe to the peat bogs of Minnesota, this is a dark and humorous
tale of orchid smugglers, ice-cream makers and visionary breeders;
of courruption, murder and moths with 12-inch tongues; and of the
vicious, bizarre world of international plant politics and the wide
range of gentle people whose overriding passion is the cultivation
of these beautiful, fragile flowers.
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