Orchidomania: Orchid Deception By Design

Nearly half of all orchid species are con artists.They mimic female insects to trick males into sex. They build catapults, trapdoors, and chemical lures. They smell like chocolate – or rotting flesh. They have convinced humanity to build glass palaces for them, cross oceans for them, and occasionally murder for them.History remembers pirates and cowboys – but the Golden Age of Piracy lasted a decade and left no buried treasure. The Wild West saw fewer than 10 bank robberies across 15 western states in 40 years. The orchid hunters' story is wilder than both, and all of it is true.Orchidomania is a witty, wide-ranging journey through the secret lives of the world's most devious flower family. From Darwin's famous prediction of a moth with a 30 cm tongue – vindicated 135 years later – to the one-handed Czech explorer who terrorised the Colombian jungle with a steel hook, this is natural history at its most entertaining.Part science, part adventure, part love letter to obsession, Orchidomania reveals how 28,000 species of orchid have been outsmarting everything – fungi, insects, empires, and us – for 90 million years.Illustrated throughout with over 50 meticulously restored Victorian botanical plates – from Curtis's Botanical Magazine, The Orchid Album, Haeckel's Kunstformen der Natur, and more – brought back to life from rare 19th-century originals. Read more