Ape, which is said to be seven feet tall and weigh seven hundred pounds and have the physique of a human, the posture of an ape, the body odor of a skunk, and an appetite for lima beans. There is also an anonymous, ghostly human being whom the Fakahatchee rangers call the Ghost Grader, who brings real—not imaginary—construction equipment into the swamp every once in a while and clears off the vine-covered roads.
If the ghost orchid was really only a phantom it was still such a bewitching one that it could seduce people to pursue it year after year and mile after miserable mile. If it was a real flower I wanted to keep coming back to Florida until I could see one. The reason was not that I love orchids. I don’t even especially
like
orchids. What I wanted was to see this thing that people were drawn to in such a singular and powerful way. Everyone I was meeting connected to the orchid poaching had circled their lives around some great desire—Laroche had his crazy inspirations and orchid lovers had their intense devotion to their flowers and the Seminoles had their burning dedication to their history and culture—a desire that then answered questions for them about how to spend their time and their money and who their friendswould be and where they would travel and what they did when they got there. It was religion. I
wanted
to want something as much as people wanted these plants, but it isn’t part of my constitution. I think people my age are embarrassed by too much enthusiasm and believe that too much passion about anything is naive. I suppose I do have one unembarrassing passion—I want to know what it feels like to care about something passionately. That night I called Laroche and told him that I had just come back from looking for ghost orchids in the Fakahatchee but that I had seen nothing but bare roots. I said that I was wondering whether I had missed this year’s flowers or whether perhaps the only place the ghost orchid bloomed was in the imagination of people who’d walked too long in the swamp. What I didn’t say was that strong feelings always make me skeptical at first. What else I didn’t say was that his life seemed to be filled with things that were just like the ghost orchid—wonderful to imagine and easy to fall in love with but a little fantastic and fleeting and out of reach.
I could hear a soft puckery gulp as he inhaled cigarette smoke. Then he said, “Jesus Christ, of course there are ghost orchids out there! I’ve
stolen
them, for Chrissake! I know exactly where they are.” The phone was silent for a moment, and then he cleared his throat and said, “You
should
have gone with me.”
Orchid Fever
The Orchidaceae is a large, ancient family of perennial plants with one fertile stamen and a three-petaled flower. One petal is unlike the other two. In most orchid species this petal is enlarged into a pouch or lip and is the most conspicuous part of the flower. There are more than thirty thousand known orchid species, and there may be thousands more that haven’t yet been discovered and maybe thousands that once lived on earth and are now extinct. Humans have created another hundred thousand hybrids by cross-fertilizing one species with another or by crossing different hybrids to one another in plant-breeding labs.
Orchids are considered the most highly evolved flowering plants on earth. They are unusual in form, uncommonly beautiful in color, often powerfully fragrant, intricate in structure, and different from any other family of plants. The reason for their unusualness has always been puzzled over. One guess is that orchids might have evolved in soil that was naturallyirradiated by a meteor or mineral deposit, and that the radiation is what mutated them into thousands of amazing forms. Orchids have diverse and unflowerlike looks. One species looks just like a German shepherd dog with its tongue sticking out. One species looks like an onion. One looks like an octopus. One looks like
If the ghost orchid was really only a phantom it was still such a bewitching one that it could seduce people to pursue it year after year and mile after miserable mile. If it was a real flower I wanted to keep coming back to Florida until I could see one. The reason was not that I love orchids. I don’t even especially
like
orchids. What I wanted was to see this thing that people were drawn to in such a singular and powerful way. Everyone I was meeting connected to the orchid poaching had circled their lives around some great desire—Laroche had his crazy inspirations and orchid lovers had their intense devotion to their flowers and the Seminoles had their burning dedication to their history and culture—a desire that then answered questions for them about how to spend their time and their money and who their friendswould be and where they would travel and what they did when they got there. It was religion. I
wanted
to want something as much as people wanted these plants, but it isn’t part of my constitution. I think people my age are embarrassed by too much enthusiasm and believe that too much passion about anything is naive. I suppose I do have one unembarrassing passion—I want to know what it feels like to care about something passionately. That night I called Laroche and told him that I had just come back from looking for ghost orchids in the Fakahatchee but that I had seen nothing but bare roots. I said that I was wondering whether I had missed this year’s flowers or whether perhaps the only place the ghost orchid bloomed was in the imagination of people who’d walked too long in the swamp. What I didn’t say was that strong feelings always make me skeptical at first. What else I didn’t say was that his life seemed to be filled with things that were just like the ghost orchid—wonderful to imagine and easy to fall in love with but a little fantastic and fleeting and out of reach.
I could hear a soft puckery gulp as he inhaled cigarette smoke. Then he said, “Jesus Christ, of course there are ghost orchids out there! I’ve
stolen
them, for Chrissake! I know exactly where they are.” The phone was silent for a moment, and then he cleared his throat and said, “You
should
have gone with me.”
Orchid Fever
The Orchidaceae is a large, ancient family of perennial plants with one fertile stamen and a three-petaled flower. One petal is unlike the other two. In most orchid species this petal is enlarged into a pouch or lip and is the most conspicuous part of the flower. There are more than thirty thousand known orchid species, and there may be thousands more that haven’t yet been discovered and maybe thousands that once lived on earth and are now extinct. Humans have created another hundred thousand hybrids by cross-fertilizing one species with another or by crossing different hybrids to one another in plant-breeding labs.
Orchids are considered the most highly evolved flowering plants on earth. They are unusual in form, uncommonly beautiful in color, often powerfully fragrant, intricate in structure, and different from any other family of plants. The reason for their unusualness has always been puzzled over. One guess is that orchids might have evolved in soil that was naturallyirradiated by a meteor or mineral deposit, and that the radiation is what mutated them into thousands of amazing forms. Orchids have diverse and unflowerlike looks. One species looks just like a German shepherd dog with its tongue sticking out. One species looks like an onion. One looks like an octopus. One looks like
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