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Orchid Fever: A Horticultural Tale of Love, Lust, and Lunacy

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Manufacturer: Vintage
List Price: $13.95
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The acclaimed author of Motoring with Mohammed brings us a compelling adventure into the remarkable world of the orchid and the impossibly bizarre array of international characters who dedicte their lives to it.

The orchid is used for everything from medicine for elephants to an aphrodisiac ice cream. A Malaysian species can grow to weigh half a ton while a South American species fires miniature pollen darts at nectar-sucking bees. But the orchid is also the center of an illicit international business: one grower in Santa Barbara tends his plants while toting an Uzi, and a former collector has been in hiding for seven years after serving a jail sentence for smuggling thirty dollars worth of orchids into Britain. Deftly written and captivatingly researched, Orchid Fever is an endlessly enchanting and entertaining tour of an exotic world.

"A wonderful book, I've been up all night reading it, laughing and crying out in horror and clucking at the vivid images of bureaucracy with the bit in its teeth." —Annie Proulx

"An extraordinary, well-told tale of botany, obsession and plant politics. Hansen's vivid descriptions of the complex techniques some orchids use to pollinate themselves will raise your eyebrows at nature's sexual ingenuity." —USA Today


DESCRIPTION:

Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 910
EAN: 9780679771838
ISBN: 0679771832
Label: Vintage
Manufacturer: Vintage
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 288
Publication Date: 2001-02-27
Publisher: Vintage
Release Date: 2001-02-13
Studio: Vintage


SIMILAR ITEMS:

• The Bird Man and the Lap Dancer: Close Encounters with Strangers
• Motoring with Mohammed: Journeys to Yemen and the Red Sea
• The Orchid Thief: A True Story of Beauty and Obsession (Ballantine Reader's Circle)
• Stranger in the Forest: On Foot Across Borneo
• Understanding Orchids: An Uncomplicated Guide to Growing the World's Most Exotic Plants


CUSTOMER REVIEWS:

Customer Rating:
Summary: Salacious and trivial
Comment: There's probably a good book about orchids and the recondite subject of international orchid policy in "Orchid Fever." In fact, I'm sure of it. Unfortunately, Eric Hansen spoils his effort with a lubricious, snarky brew of exaggerations, sneers, dubious anecdotes and invented suggestions.

One example can stand for a multitude of sins. Hansen attends a three-day conference and trade show of orchid fanciers, trying to set up the idea that these people are wild, crazy, risk-taking guys and gals -- not far from sociopaths is the general view. His evidence: The conferees sang karaoke and after that, "What went on in the hotel rooms after dark between the orchid growers was anybody's guess."

You could write the same thing about an Amway convention. So?

The serious issue behind this unserious book is how (or if) to conserve orchids that may (or may not) be threatened by collectors, habitat destruction or whatever it is that threatens orchids.

The antagonists are, on one side, amateurs, businessmen and independent scholars; and, on the other, academics and international bureaucrats, who are accused of self-aggrandizement and appropriation. It is not an issue just with orchids or even just about plants. It comes up concerning ancient artifacts, fossils, sunken treasure, even -- in a non-material sense -- myths and legends. See my review of "A Dinosaur Named Sue" for an example with fossils.

A friend of mine who runs an orchid nursery confirms the difficulty. Under a treaty called CITES that purports to protect endangered species, he must prove that his commercial stock (450 species) does not derive from wild-collected plants. Of course, ultimately, any orchid derives from such stock, but CITES has rules. My friend got much of his stock from his teacher, now dead. How can he prove where the teacher obtained it?

My friend could have his business shut down. In the worst instance, he could be shut up in a prison. It has happened to others.

"Orchid Fever" has obtained wide publicity and wide sales. It was aimed at the thoughtless, the sensationalistic and the lascivious, and there are plenty of those people out there. It's sad that probably the most-read book about orchids turns out to be a piece of low-rent crap.

Customer Rating:
Summary: Warning! Obsessively good writing from a master . . .
Comment: Having no interest in orchids whatsoever, I picked up "Orchid Fever" because I have been smitten with Eric Hansen's lucied and entertaining adventure writings (see previous reviews). This book is well researched and very well salted with Hansen's devastating wit and easygoing demeanor.

We are introduced to the orchid universe via the growers, scientists, show judges, "orchid police", and so-called smugglers who turn out to be not so.

Hansen once more captivates with these loosely linked stories of orchid obsessed people and the absurdities of the power brokers so bent on enforcing horticultural regulations that end up ensnaring the wrong people.

"Orchid Fever" is part expose, part travelogue, part literary journalism, and part horticultural history. This really is investigative writing at its very best, at turns tantalizing and educational. This man has a seriously clever wit which keeps the narrative light and fluid.

Hansen's abilities as a writer are superb: he knows his craft as well as any contemporary non-fiction writer. The seven years of creating this wonderfully woven bunch of stories is very much appreciated. From the first sentence, your attention is requisitioned and not released until the last - the mark of a Big League writer I think.

As always with Eric Hansen, my highest kudos.

Parataxis

The Cloud Reckoner

Extracts: A Field Guide for Iconoclasts














Customer Rating:
Summary: Heavy breathing among the Paphiopedilae
Comment: "I thumbed through the pages ... Immediately I was confronted with centerfolds showing ... moistened, hot-pink lips that pouted in the direction of tautly curved shafts and heavily veined pouches." - from "Bodice Ripper", a chapter in ORCHID FEVER

A porn mag featuring your favorite XXX-rated stars? Um, no. An orchid catalogue, actually, as described by author Eric Hansen in his narrative exploration of the science, business, hobby, and collecting of orchids, ORCHID FEVER. Who knew flower breeding could be so titillating, or so lucrative? Indeed, as of the turn of the last century, orchids generated about $9 billion of worldwide business annually.

With so much money to be made, it's no surprise that the collection of wild orchids and their transport across national boundaries is so fiercely regulated, ostensibly to protect orchid populations in their natural habitats. But, of course, the cynical will recognize that it's all about the fees generated by the obligatory export licenses and certificates. Indeed, much of ORCHID FEVER is about the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), headquartered in Geneva, and its almost Gestapo-like enforcement powers, which, as Eric tells the story, have done virtually nothing to protect free-range orchids and have only increased their demand and value vis-a-vis breeders, hobbyists, and collectors.

Hansen illustrates his subject by traveling the world from California to Borneo to Minnesota to Britain to Germany to Turkey to France to New York and to Holland to interview the field's "horticultural extremists, pioneers, lone rangers, fantasy merchants, flower show flim-flam people, paid informers, rapacious nurserymen, international plant smugglers, pollen thieves, eccentric botanists, corrupt orchid judges, legendary growers, misfits, groupies, and camp followers". Though, as the author states, normal, balanced people are drawn to orchids, he found such only infrequently.

"Behind the cash register (of a neighborhood grocery store) sat a long shelf filled with mass-produced Phalaenopsis hybrids, selling for $19.95; every time I saw them I thought about the California orchid grower who shot and killed his partner and then mutilated the corpse because they couldn't agree on how to breed and sell these supermarket-quality house plants."

Perhaps the most engaging chapter, especially if you like frozen desserts, is "The Fox Testicle Ice Cream", in which Eric journeys to Maras, Turkey, the home of orchid ice cream, salepi dondurma, made from the tubers of the flower genus Orchis. Indeed, the chapter is so informative and interesting that a large segment of it was apparently plagiarized on a website I discovered sponsored by a Turkish-American business alliance. (After I communicated this fact to the author, he replied that it wasn't the first or last time such has happened, and he would pursue getting credit for the entry.)

When I began dating as a teenager in the late sixties, if I really wanted to impress the girl I'd buy a stalk of 5-6 orchids for 3 bucks from an elderly next-door neighbor that grew them. I don't recall that the expenditure ever helped me get lucky, but they sure were impressive in the giving. Nowadays, try buying just one on Mother's Day for less than an hour's pay. After reading Hansen's excellent volume, I better understand the orchid's mystique.
Customer Rating:
Summary: I'd love an update!
Comment: I read this with jaw agape most of the time. The main reason for this embarrassing state of affairs was the CITES ridiculousness that crops up again and again. Can people in positions of power REALLY be so stupid? Well, yep, they can, sadly enough for the thousands of plants that are destroyed in the name of "development," illegal to save by conservationists.
But the people Hansen meets are equally worthy of a jaw drop. Their passion--there's truly no other word, unless it is obsession--for their orchids simply astounded me. Wonderfully humorous, enlightening reading.
Now that I've read it nearly a decade after many of the encounters described, I am longing for an update. What's become of the CITES laws? Has common sense prevailed? What about the individual scientists and growers? Are they still as enthralled with their plants? What a terrific book, to leave me hungering for so much more!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Orchid Fever
Comment: Easy reading,interesting,and educational.After reading Orchid Fever,I read a comment in Orchids at Home,and having read Orchid Fever,I realized that ugly,just like beauty,is in the eye of the beholder.

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