Book Review of The Orchid Thief
Natural Wanders…
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The Orchid Thief: A Study of Obsession
Review by Linda Lee Rathbun
Gulfshore Life Magazine

Text: Copyright Linda Lee Rathbun, protected by international copyright laws.
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A Study of Obsession
by Linda Lee Rathbun

A journalist in New York reads a newspaper article about an orchid thief. He is being tried in Naples, Florida for the illegal removal of over 200 wild orchid plants from the Fakahatchee Strand State Preserve. The journalist, a writer for The New Yorker, wants to know more and she flies down to attend the hearing. She meets the thief, John Laroche, and becomes intrigued. Yes he stole the orchids for profit, but it is much deeper than that. It is an obsession, a passion so great it is all-consuming. The writer, a cool, detached observer of life, is envious of people like Laroche who consume and burn life. What drives them? This, more than anything else, is what The Orchid Thief is about.
Susan Orlean plunges into the world of orchid collectors and creates a book that is meticulously researched, almost covetous in its envy of people driven by the desire to obtain orchids, and written in the pleasing, flowing prose of books like "The Perfect Storm" and "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil". In the "The Orchid Thief" though, the story spreads out from a single event, rather than building up to it. The main orchid thief, and indeed all the other orchid thieves that Orlean unveils in an account of the "profession", are irascible rogues driven at first by greed, and eventually by lust. As we learn about orchid thievery, Orlean gives us a delightfully detailed view of Florida, with fascinating revelations of its early settlement and development, the plunder of its environment, the conflicts with natives, and outragious schemes to sell swamp land. Her observations are both insightful and revealing. Florida, Orlean states, strikes her as "always formenting change, its natural landscapes just moments away from being drained and developed, its most manicured places only an instant away from collapsing back into jungle".
Orlean shows us a whole other world out there, a world inhabited by a cult of worshippers who live for orchids. They collect, breed, mutate, clone, hybridize, sell, trade, barter, covet and lust for orchids. When they go on holiday, it is to places where they can see and buy orchids. Some of them have, and some continue to, plunder wildernesses around the world to collect orchids. When necessary, they pay thousands of dollars for a single plant. No wonder Orlean wants to understand such reckless desire, who wouldn't be curious?
For fans of non-fiction, The Orchid Thief has history, ecology, botany, biology, horticulture, real-life adventure, and legal conundrums. For fiction fans there is conflict, passion, greed, rivalry, and feuds. For all of us there are intriquing issues raised. Should Seminole Indians be exempt from the laws that protect wild plants and animals? Does it make sense to protect a plant, but not the habitat it is growing in? Orlean never preaches or expresses her opinion, leaving us to contemplate and come to our own conclusions.
As Orlean visited nurseries in Florida, the primary orchid producers in the U.S., she was given many plants. She, in turn, gave them away as quickly as possible, like someone trying to avoid catching an illness. Yet, in the end I think she was seduced too. For anyone interested in orchids, Florida, collecting, and obesession,
"The Orchid Thief" is worth reading.

THE END

 

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