View images from the book "A Passion for Orchids" by Jack Kramer
"Live Wild...or Die." Once upon a time, the world's orchids came from exotic lands and untamed places. Today, the orchid's ever changing botany is born in a lab. But the history and the characters and the stories of orchids are still wild. And thanks to all that crossbreeding, the orchid is still irresistible.
Its names: Persisteria, Sophronitis, Grandiflora, Markie Pooh. Its adornments: spots and swirls and speckles. Its colors, from the purest white to "the yellow of a newly waxed taxi."
First-timers take home the Home Depot orchids in the throwaway pots. Aficionados live neck deep in the swamp of obsession. Somewhere between the two are the roots of addiction.
The already-afflicted have a warning: It's dangerous. It's expensive. And it's futile to resist.
