Apparently orchid hunting was once (and maybe still is??) a perilous occupation. According to the NY Times:

The organizers might have included the “knives, cutlasses, revolvers, pistols” that Albert Millican, the author of “Travels and Adventures of an Orchid Hunter” (1893), packed for his trips in Colombia, along with “an overflowing supply of tobacco and newspapers.”

The weapons were not just for show. William Arnold, one of Sander’s men, drew his revolver on a rival hunter he ran into aboard a ship sailing to Venezuela. When he complained about the interloper in a letter to Sander, his boss offered a suggestion: Follow the foe, collect what he collected, then urinate on his orchids.

Rivalry was fierce, methods often unscrupulous. Orchid hunters, having found a rare species, gathered every flower they could find, cutting down trees by the thousands, devastating habitat and, in some cases, setting fire to the forest to destroy any samples left behind.

At the same time, the derring-do could be impressive. Benedikt Roezl, one of the more colorful figures described in the exhibition, blazed a solitary trail and refused to carry a firearm, even after being robbed at gun- or knife-point 17 times. He had a hook for a left hand, deeply impressive to the indigenes, and iron resolve. He scaled the Colima volcano in Mexico as it was erupting, reaching the peak as lava flowed around him. The expedition was a success, with 100,000 plants collected.

Many hunters ran out of luck. “Among my collectors who have died in harness I remember Falkenberg in Panama, Klaboch in Mexico, Endres on the Rio Hacha, Wallace in Ecuador, Schroder in Sierra Leone on the west coast of Africa, poor Arnold on the Orinoco, Digance in Brazil and Brown in Madagascar,” Sander told The New York Herald-Tribune in 1906. “All these have met more or less tragic deaths through wild beasts, savages, fever, drowning, falls or other accidents.”

Not surprisingly, the exploits of the orchid hunters found their way into adventure novels like “The Orchid Seekers: A Story of Adventure in Borneo” or H. Rider Haggard’s “Allan and the Holy Flower,” a ripping yarn about orchid hunting in Zululand.

The New York Times described the 2016 Orchid Show (Orchidelerium) in an interesting article: ‘Orchidelirium’ Explodes With Color at New York Botanical Garden:

The orchid trail at the New York Botanical Garden burns with color like a slow fuse. Along a greenhouse walkway in the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory, refitted for “Orchidelirium,” this year’s edition of the annual orchid show, clustered plantings clamor, each more brilliant and extravagantly shaped than its neighbor. Tiny blazing-yellow Colombian buttercup orchids jostle with frilly, purply-red Pacific Sun Spots, which compete with hybrid Phalaenopsis, their petals decorated with pink stripes as fine as a hair.

This tropical tour builds to a whopper of a climax. At the end of the path, rising in majesty, is a mountain of volcanic stone, with a waterfall splashing down its forbidding face. From foot to summit, the mountain is draped with orchids in profusion, like a shower of botanical jewels.

This is the Indiana Jones moment: when the expedition, fighting twisted vines and dense jungle undergrowth, reaches a clearing and beholds the sacred peak whose name local tribes dare not speak aloud, a repository of riches beyond the dreams of avarice.

We went to the orchid show at the NY Botanical Garden last week. Needless to say there were lots of things to photograph. I thought about selecting just a few of them to post, but there were so many lovely flowers that I’ve decided to post them all – in batches, a few at a time. This is the first part. Unfortunately I don’t know the names of any of them. I’m sure that they were all marked, but I didn’t think to note the names.

Unfortunately the show closed April 17.