Along the way, Orlean learned the history of orchid collecting, discovered an odd pattern of plant crimes in Florida, and spent time with Laroche’s partners, a tribe of Seminole Indians who are still at war with the United States. “New Yorker writer Susan Orlean followed Laroche through swamps and into the eccentric world of Florida’s orchid collectors, a subculture of aristocrats, fanatics, and smugglers whose obsession with plants is all-consuming. The result is a tale that is strange, compelling, and hilarious. After he was caught in the act, Laroche set off one of the oddest legal controversies in recent memory, which brought together environmentalists, Native American activists, and devoted orchid collectors. Laroche had planned to clone the orchids and then sell them for a small fortune to impassioned collectors. In 1994, Laroche and three Seminole Indians were arrested with rare orchids they had stolen from a wild swamp in south Florida that is filled with some of the world’s most extraordinary plants and trees. “In Susan Orlean’s mesmerizing true story of beauty and obsession is John Laroche, a renegade plant dealer and sharply handsome guy, in spite of the fact that he is missing his front teeth and has the posture of al dente spaghetti.
I’m proud to report that the book was a New York Times bestseller, a Barnes and Noble Discover book, a Borders New Voices selection, an honoree in the American Library Association and New York Public Library books-of-the-year selections, and the subject of the movie, Adaptation. I found myself as passionate about the project as the orchid fanatics were about their flowers, and that is ultimately what the book is about.
I certainly never imagined that I would willingly hike through the swamps of South Florida - but that’s what writing a book does to you. I never imagined that I would end up spending the next two years shadowing Laroche and exploring the odd, passionate world of orchid fanatics. In 1994, I headed down to Florida to investigate the story of John Laroche, an eccentric plant dealer who had been arrested along with a crew of Seminoles for poaching rare orchids out of the a South Florida swamp.
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