SYMHC Classics: Victorian Orchidelirium

This 2018 episode covers the craze in the 1800s when orchids became a status symbol and the cornerstone of a high-dollar industry. Collecting the plants involved adventure and excitement -- and a high death rate. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.

• 0:04Speaker 01

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 help make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 0:33Holly Frey?

  A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. In season seven of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, host Martine Hackett continues the conversation with people living with MG, CIDP, and the broader rare disease community, exploring what comes after diagnosis through stories of hope, progress, and connection. Produced by Ruby Studio in partnership with Argenx, listen on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We've all tumbled down an internet rabbit hole trying to self-diagnose, and it leaves us more anxious than informed. Our feeds are full of wellness trends, but how do we know what's real, what's exaggerated, and what's just wrong?

• 1:16Holly Frey?

  Health vs. Hype from the American Medical Association breaks it all down. Emmy-nominated science communicator Trace Dominguez talks to doctors, influencers, and real people trying these trends, not to cancel them, but to understand them. Because when it comes to your health, who you listen to matters. So listen to Health vs. Hype wherever you get your podcasts.

• 1:36Tracy V. Wilson?

  The Old Gays are back with Silver Linings, their lovable podcast from iHeart's Ruby Studio in partnership with ViiV Healthcare. Robert, Mick, Bill, and Jessa strut back down memory lane for season two, sharing lessons on life, love, and loss. These are the kind of insights that only come from experience. So tune in to Silver Linings with The Old Gays on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You ever show up late to the game and your friends already saved your seat, your drink, even a plate? That's looking out. That's having your back, and that's a Exactly what AT&T does with the AT&T guarantee. They know staying connected matters, so they actually guarantee a network that comes through when it counts.

• 2:19Tracy V. Wilson?

  AT&T has connectivity you can depend on, or they'll proactively make it right, just like that friend who takes care of things before you even ask. AT&T: Connecting changes everything. Terms and conditions apply. Visit att.com/guarantee for details.

• 2:38Holly Frey?

  Happy Saturday. Today, we are returning to an episode on flowers, specifically orchids, and the tremendous enthusiasm for them during the Victorian era.

• 2:49Tracy V. Wilson?

  This originally came out on July 2, 2018. Enjoy.

• 2:56Holly Frey?

  Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio.

• 3:07Holly Frey?

  Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Frey.

• 3:09Tracy V. Wilson?

  And I'm Tracy V. Wilson.

• 3:11Holly Frey?

  And if you listened to the 2011 Tulip Mania episode that Sarah and Dublina did, you know already that sometimes people go a little mad in their obsessions when it comes to plants. And today, we're going to talk about another episode in history in which plants became a status symbol and the cornerstone of a high-dollar industry. And while we're not really going to talk about him later on in this episode, I did want to mention that this one also brushes up against our episode on Joseph Paxton and the Crystal Palace, because Paxton also cultivated gardens and built a conservatory for William Camendish, the sixth Duke of Devonshire, also known as the Bachelor Duke.

• 3:52Holly Frey?

  And in that job, he gathered the largest collection in England for his royal employer. The Bachelor Duke had also fallen victim to Orchid Delirium, which was an intense obsession with the plants that was sweeping through Victorian England at the time. And that is what we are talking about today.

• 4:10Tracy V. Wilson?

  So orchids date back at least 20 million years. In 2007, a bee was discovered. It was preserved in amber, and it dated back that far, and also still had orchid pollen stuck to its wings. A fossilized orchid from New Zealand is dated back 21 million years. It's possible that orchids existed as far back as the late Cretaceous period, around 80 million years ago, or maybe even longer.

• 4:37Holly Frey?

  Yeah, so they survived when the dinosaurs did not. Orchids grow all over the world. The only inhospitable areas are open water, true deserts, and glaciers. And there are species of orchid that grow from the ground, but a lot of varieties are epiphytes, meaning that they grow on other plants or rocks. Some even grow on fungus. They are sometimes mentioned as being parasitic. That's not actually the case. They're getting their nutrients from the air around them. They just kind of need a place to perch. And unsurprisingly, for a plant family that can thrive in so many different places, there is a vast range of species of orchid. There are more than 27,000 species of orchid. Some sources will list that number as even higher.

• 5:21Holly Frey?

  More are being discovered all the time. This incredible range makes the taxonomy of the Orchidaceae challenging. The flowers of orchids can range from single flowering plants to multiple blooms on a stalk. And this is the most diverse flower family.

• 5:37Tracy V. Wilson?

  Orchids are usually pollinated by insects or birds, and the plants have evolved to make themselves as appealing as possible to their pollinators. A lot of times, the plants have a petal or leaf shapes that enable pollinators to rest on the plant while they're making a visit. An estimated one-third of orchid species have figured out some kind of trickery to ensure their propagation. So there are varieties that look and smell like female bees, so that solitary males will come and spread their pollen around. The Dracula orchid attracts insects that usually eat dung by emitting a lot of different horrifying smells that reproduce the sense of not just animal excrement, but also urine and decaying meat.

• 6:21Holly Frey?

  Yeah, that's one of those plants where I will admit, just because I like Gothic-y things, by virtue of it being called the Dracula orchid, I'm like, yes. And then knowing what it smells like, hard pass. The slipper orchid has a really unique structure. That first offers an inviting drink from its pouch-like structure. That's like the petal on the bottom is kind of shaped like a little pouch. And then that will trap insects attracted to it in the pouch with only one way out. And that path involves the insect passing through usually a tight opening that ensures that its body is covered with pollen grains, pollenia. And then, once free, when that insect is drawn to the next bloom, those pollen grains

• 7:04Holly Frey?

  are deposited and new ones are picked up, and so on.

• 7:07Tracy V. Wilson?

  A single orchid plant can produce as many as 74 million seeds. And in the wild, they require exposure to a symbiotic fungus to germinate. In controlled conditions like nurseries and home germination, a special growing medium is used instead. Orchids can also propagate asexually through division when a single plant splits into two actively growing pieces.

• 7:33Holly Frey?

  Yeah, that division approach was used a lot by some of the people that we will be talking about later. The other thing that I think we should mention is that a lot of these orchids are so specific in the way they have evolved to attract one specific pollinator, and it becomes a really unique relationship. Orchids have, of course, been revered by humans throughout recorded history. They were thought to have aphrodisiac qualities in ancient Greece. They were used to flavor food by the Aztecs. And they have been used in traditional Chinese medicine for centuries to treat everything from lung and kidney disease to tonsillitis and even cancer.

• 8:12Tracy V. Wilson?

  While studying the Anglicum sesquipedale, Charles Darwin came to the conclusion that this flower, which has a really deep bloom and then a nectary, which is the glandular organ that secretes nectar, sometimes is deep as 30 centimeters, which is a little over 11 inches. He concluded that it must have evolved alongside a moth species that had a unique trait to allow it to be pollinated. So to explain how this flower with this very deep well could be pollinated, he theorized that a moth must have a proboscis that could extend up to almost the length of the entire flower's depth.

• 8:50Holly Frey?

  And this particular bit of orchid study has become really famous because co-evolution at this point was a very new idea, and because Darwin did not have a moth specimen to back up this theory. Charles Darwin died in 1882 without ever having his hypothesis confirmed. In 1907, though, a subspecies of the giant Congo moth, which came from Madagascar, just as Darwin's orchid samples had, was discovered. This moth subspecies, named Exmorgani predicta, was approximately 16 centimeters from wingtip to wingtip, and it had a proboscis which sat coiled on its head and then could extend 20 centimeters or more.

• 9:31Holly Frey?

  It seemed to fit the bill, but it wasn't until 1992, more than a century after Darwin's death, that scientists were finally able to actually observe and capture footage of these large moths pollinating those orchids.

• 9:45Tracy V. Wilson?

  It looks really cool.

• 9:47Holly Frey?

  It does. It's really neat.

• 9:49Tracy V. Wilson?

  But what's important for today's show, in terms of the work that Darwin was doing with orchids, is that it all happened in the second half of the 19th century. And at the same time, particularly in Victorian England, Orchid Delirium was becoming a significant phenomenon.

• 10:04Holly Frey?

  Botanist William John Swainson is often credited with introducing orchids from Brazil to Great Britain and sparking the obsession with these flowers. But that happened, actually, by accident, at least according to legend. So the story goes that Swainson had picked up a number of other plant samples to ship back home to England in the 18-teens, and he used un-bloomed orchids, which he believed at the time to be weeds, as packing material. And the orchids bloomed either en route to their destination or just after the parcels were unpacked, depending on your source, and immediately captured the attention of everyone who saw them.

• 10:41Tracy V. Wilson?

  As Great Britain continued to expand its power through colonization, exoticism flourished. People of means became collectors of rare and exciting things from all around the world, and orchids became an obsession for some of them. Naturally, a cottage industry grew to fill this expanding demand for these blooms, and the second half of the 19th century saw the business of orchid collecting, growing, and selling, reaching cutthroat levels of competition.

• 11:09Holly Frey?

  And coming up, we are going to talk about a man who came to be known as the Orchid King. But first, we're going to pause for a word from one of our sponsors.

• 11:21Speaker 04

  Cash flow crunch? OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds, up to $200,000, right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 11:51Speaker 05

  First thought is like, wow, how are we going to do all this?

• 11:54Tracy V. Wilson?

  Hey, everybody. It's Tracy from Stuff You Missed in History Class. That's Alan Goya, a planning engineer at AT&T. He's talking about Intuit Dome, home of the Los Angeles Clippers, where every seat, screen, phone, and transaction is connected with AT&T Fiber and 5G, defining the fan's experience. And Alan's master plan made it all possible.

• 12:14Speaker 05

  It was going to rival anything that was already built. And that takes quite a bit of people and different teams to all be on the same page.

• 12:22Tracy V. Wilson?

  That includes field services manager Drexel Jones. His team made sure it all came together and held up on game day.

• 12:29Speaker 06

  Through what Alan's whole crew designed, we connected the event visitors to the world.

• 12:34Tracy V. Wilson?

  And after years of hard work and collaboration, it was opening night.

• 12:38Speaker 06

  To actually see the whole stadium light up and data is flowing is a beautiful thing.

• 12:42Speaker 05

  With the fan's experience, it's incredible. It gave me a lot of pride.

• 12:46Tracy V. Wilson?

  AT&T, connecting fans to what they love. Connecting changes everything. AT&T. So you're considering getting a home security system, but you want something that fits your space. Well, with ADT Blue, it's easy to customize a system that's right for you and set it up yourself. Just pick the kit and monitoring plan that makes sense for your home. Let's say you're worried about package theft. The ADT Plus app can walk you through setting up a new doorbell camera kit. Once it's installed, ADT Pros can help you keep tabs on it 24/7, or you can manage it yourself from the ADT Plus app. There are no long-term contracts, so you can change your monitoring plan whenever you want. The flexibility doesn't end there. You can add to your system as you need to with things like... Like extra cameras or motion sensors.

• 13:31Tracy V. Wilson?

  Some life decisions are hard, but thanks to ADT Blue, you can DIY trusted ADT home security in a snap. Head to ADT.com/BLU to build your system today. And to hear more about home protection and other grown up topics, check out new episodes of Grown Up Stuff on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 13:58Holly Frey?

  We've all done it. Tumble down an internet rabbit hole trying to self diagnose. And sometimes doing our own research can leave us more anxious than informed. Your feed is packed with wellness trends telling you to cold plunge, protein max, detox, track your sleep. But what's actually real? What's exaggerated? What's just wrong? That's exactly what Health vs. Hype from the American Medical Association and iHeart Media's Ruby Studio is here to find out. Each episode, Emmy nominated science communicator Trace Dominguez, who's racked up billions of views across PBS, Discovery Channel, and YouTube, talks to doctors, influencers, and real people trying these trends.

• 14:40Holly Frey?

  Not to cancel them, not to hype them more, but to actually understand them. Because when it comes to your health, who you listen to matters. Start asking better questions and listen to Health vs. Hype on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 15:01Tracy V. Wilson?

  Guess who's back in the house? The old gays return for season two of Silver Linings, their hit podcast from iHeart's Ruby Studio in partnership with ViiV Healthcare. Just wait until you hear what hosts Robert McMillan and Jessa have in store this time around. They strut back down memory lane, navigating life, love, loss, and everything that shaped them along the way. And as usual, someone just might break into song. From leather bars to bathhouses, dance floors to drag brunch, nothing stays off limits. These are the kinds of insights that can only come from experience. So listen to your elders, honey, and discover the silver lining. You can take with you all sass, zero filter,

• 15:43Tracy V. Wilson?

  and decades of perspective from four friends proving that queer joy only gets better with age on the podcast that never gets old. Listen to Silver Linings, available on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 16:07Holly Frey?

  One of the most famous entrepreneurs to capitalize on orchid delirium was Frederick Sander. Sander was born in Germany in 1847, and at the age of 20, he had moved to London and started working for a seed company. But he didn't stay there for long because while he was working there, he met a Czechoslovakian botanist named Benedict Rosel. And before long, the two men decided to go into business together.

• 16:30Tracy V. Wilson?

  Rosel was more than 20 years older than Sander. He'd been working with plants since he was 12, first as an apprentice gardener and then tending the gardens of European aristocracy. In the 1850s, he had moved to Mexico and set up a hemp nursery. But he had an accident. There was a machine that he invented to clean hemp fiber, and it severed one of his hands. He went back to Europe before switching careers to become a plant hunter, and he replaced that lost hand with a hook. And according to legend, that gave him some added cachet on his adventures.

• 17:02Holly Frey?

  Yeah, he apparently was a very tall, striking man to begin with. And then when he had this hook hand, it kind of fulfills every Victorian romantic novel fantasy of like a rough and rugged person. And he is kind of talked about that way even today when you read about him in books about orchids. And when Rosel met Sander, he had been collecting plants abroad for some time. But he had never had a partner who could receive them and then sell the inventory back home, which meant that he would have to travel back and forth with the plants, and it cut down on his time to collect. And because he had been a one man operation, his success was modest. But once Rosel teamed up with Sander, that changed rapidly.

• 17:43Tracy V. Wilson?

  The two of them set up shop in the St. Albans district north of London. Sander had a great head for business and Rosal, just no longer encumbered by having to worry about the fate of his shipments, once they reached England, could just keep on collecting without any kind of constraint. They were quickly trading in orchids in volumes that were way beyond anything they had done before. They had a warehouse adjacent to their shop that was literally packed to the rafters with stock. Rosal worked for decades with Sander, making trips all over the world to collect orchids before he retired, a very wealthy man with dozens of plants named after him, and having discovered more than 800 different species.

• 18:22Holly Frey?

  In 1873, Frederick Sander built his first greenhouse so that he could cultivate his own seedlings, as well as importing stock. But within a few years, it became obvious that he was really quickly going to deplete that space. So in 1881, he left the seed shop and he expanded significantly to a four-acre parcel of land where he built five dozen greenhouses. He also contracted additional orchid hunters, eventually employing 23 men to travel the globe and find him new plants.

• 18:54Tracy V. Wilson?

  He also wrote a four-volume compendium of orchids titled "Reichenbachia: Orchids Illustrated and Described." It had illustrations by Henry George Moon, which are beautiful. It described almost 200 species of orchid and was published over the course of several years in the late 1880s.

• 19:13Holly Frey?

  In 1886, Sander became Queen Victoria's official royal orchid grower, a title which also gave his business a boost. He had also, incidentally, dedicated one of the volumes of Reichenbachia to her. And Sander used his high volume of acquisition and production to expand his customer base. Eventually, even middle-income plant enthusiasts could afford to possess an orchid because of his work. Sander opened a nursery across the Atlantic in New Jersey to fill demand, but he found running it long distance to just be too difficult. And he sold that business in 1896. Two years before he got rid of that North American nursery, he had opened another nursery outside of Bruges, Belgium.

• 19:56Holly Frey?

  And the Belgium enterprise, being much closer to London, was more easily manageable for Sander. He could go over there and stay for a while and handle things, but also quickly travel back home to oversee things in the London office. And that Belgium office quickly expanded, just as his English compound had. I think it too ended up with about five dozen greenhouses. And that one also diversified a lot and carried a really wide variety of plants, including azaleas, lilies, and palms.

• 20:23Tracy V. Wilson?

  Sander was well-respected. He had a reputation as an honest, direct, and energetic businessman. His love of orchids seemed to have been really genuine, and he won a lot of awards at international exhibitions for both new species that he introduced and for hybrids that were developed in his nurseries.

• 20:40Holly Frey?

  Dealing in orchids was, in some ways, kind of like trading stocks today, where the values of plants could fluctuate wildly over short periods of time. At one point, according to an account by Sander, he sold an orchid to a lawyer from Liverpool for $12, which already was probably not the tiniest amount you could imagine paying for a flower. But then, five years later, that attorney sold it back to him for $1,000.

• 21:05Tracy V. Wilson?

  And while Sander enjoyed the wheeling and beeling, receiving shipments, and tending the nurseries, the men that he was sending out into the world to find new orchids were literally risking their lives.

• 21:15Holly Frey?

  To give a sense of just how perilous this work was, according to the book, "The Woodlands Orchids," written by Frederick Boyle and published in 1901, French orchid hunter Leon Humboldt had relayed to the author that while he was collecting orchids in Madagascar, he and his brother had hosted a dinner in Tamatave, which is now known more commonly, I believe, as Tomasina. And 12 months after that dinner, Leon Humboldt was the only man from that table left alive.

• 21:43Tracy V. Wilson?

  As orchid hunters made their way around the globe, they really, really often met with bad ends. Some of them were murdered. Some of them died after run ins with wild animals. A lot of them died of tropical diseases and some of them just vanished.

• 22:00Holly Frey?

  Yeah, and there were instances where they were murdered sometimes by other plant hunters. This was really a very cutthroat business. Hunter William Arnold drowned in the Arenaco River in Venezuela while he was hunting for specimens. And that was after he had barely avoided a high probability of death in a duel with another orchid hunter over a disagreement. The duel never actually quite happened, but they were right up to it.

• 22:25Tracy V. Wilson?

  Even Benedict Rosel, who was very successful at all of this, met with grave misfortune in his travels. He was robbed at gun or knife point, or sometimes both, 17 times over his career. His nephew Francisette Clabock died of yellow fever after the two of them went on an expedition together.

• 22:44Holly Frey?

  William Mikulitz was one of Sander's best agents, and Sander was relentless in pushing him. There were numerous occasions where the man met with ill fortune and he would cable back to Sander that the trip had gone really awry and he wanted to return to England to regroup. And Sander always told him, no, no, stay there, go back, collect more samples. And at one point, he even sent him to Colombia when the country was very dangerous to travel in due to violent internal conflict. That conflict had been going on for a long, long time, but there were times when it escalated and Sander did not care. He just sent him in to get more flowers.

• 23:19Tracy V. Wilson?

  There was a particularly violent experience in Papua New Guinea in which Mikulitz witnessed several beheadings and dismemberments. And that left him really shaken and desperate to go back home. But on orders, he stayed there and found more orchids. He survived his career as an orchid hunter, but he didn't wind up retiring in style. He was almost destitute when he died back home in Germany.

• 23:43Holly Frey?

  Yeah, there's one story, and I feel like we should mention in all of these stories that the people that were telling them were the men who survived. So there is also the probability that some embellishment may have happened. In this case, Mikulitz did survive, but there is a story that at one point he had been in the midst of an area that had had a lot of violence for a long time due to various internal conflicts. He had wanted to leave. Sanders sent him back and he ended up finding this orchid that was really prized, but it was growing on a dead body. So he had to kind of steal himself just to collect this flower. That poor man to me just seems like so abused

• 24:24Holly Frey?

  in that relationship. But another orchid hunter, Albert Milliken, had several successful expeditions. And he actually penned a very popular book about his job titled Travels and Adventures of an Orchid Hunter. But unfortunately, he took one too many trips. He was stabbed to death on his last mission in the Andes.

• 24:44Tracy V. Wilson?

  In contrast, there was a pair of brothers, William and Thomas Lob, who worked as plant hunters for Veitch Nurseries. They both managed to retire from plant hunting rather than dying on the job. While there were definitely a number of business dramas in their lives and there was a great deal of adventure, the two of them managed traveling separately to collect a wide variety of plant species. A lot of them are still common in gardens today. And they died after settling down after their wilder exploits.

• 25:11Holly Frey?

  Yeah, I actually have some plans to do an episode just on the two of them in the not so distant future. And next up, we're going to delve into just how very tricky it was for orchid hunters to get their found prizes back to Europe, provided that they collected them and did not die along the way. But first, we're going to take a little sponsor break.

• 26:06Holly Frey?

  We've all done it, tumble down an internet rabbit hole trying to self diagnose. And sometimes doing our own research can leave us more anxious than informed. Your feed is packed with wellness trends telling you to cold plunge, protein max, detox, track your sleep. But what's actually real? What's exaggerated? What's just wrong? That's exactly what Health Versus Hype from the American Medical Association and iHeart Media's Ruby Studio is here to find out. Each episode, Emmy nominated science communicator Trace Dominguez, who's racked up billions of views across PBS, Discovery Channel, and YouTube, talks to doctors, influencers, and real people trying these trends.

• 26:48Holly Frey?

  Not to cancel them, not to hype them more, but to actually understand them. Because when it comes to your health, who you listen to matters. Start asking better questions and listen to Health Versus Hype on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 27:09Tracy V. Wilson?

  Guess who's back in the house? The old gays return for season two of Silver Linings, their hit podcast from iHeart's Ruby Studio in partnership with ViiV Healthcare. Just wait until you hear what hosts Robert McMillan and Jess A. have in store this time around. They strut back down memory lane navigating life, love, loss, and everything that shaped them along the way. And as usual, someone just might break into song. From leather bars to bathhouses, dance floors to drag brunch, nothing stays off limits. These are the kinds of insights that can only come from experience. So listen to your elders, honey, and discover the silver linings you can take with you. All sass, zero filter, and decades of perspective from four friends proving that queer joy

• 27:54Tracy V. Wilson?

  only gets better with age on the podcast that never gets old. Listen to Silver Linings, available on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 28:09Holly Frey?

  Deanna Flores, flag football star, trailblazer, broadcaster and entrepreneur, knows what pressure feels like. She knows what it takes to step up in the moment, and she knows that even the biggest achievement is never the end of the story.

• 28:22Tracy V. Wilson?

  In the new podcast, Born to Become with Deanna Flores, she's sitting down with people from every corner of culture, including sports, business, wellness and entertainment, to find the whole person behind the public identity.

• 28:33Holly Frey?

  Whether she's talking to an athlete on the field, a founder heading into a pitch, or a musician before a show, the conversation starts with the official bio ends.

• 28:43Tracy V. Wilson?

  Every episode, Deanna shares her own experiences, questions and even doubts. Her guests learn from her, she learns from them, and you might pick up something along the way. No lectures, no know-it-all host, just real people being real.

• 28:55Holly Frey?

  Come curious and leave with something you can use.

• 28:58Tracy V. Wilson?

  Listen to Born to Become with Deanna Flores out now on the iHeart Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Created in partnership with Geico.

• 29:11Tracy V. Wilson?

  For any small business owner, there's a moment when you realize the next hire could be the difference between staying busy and actually growing. The challenge is finding the right person without wasting time sorting through candidates who aren't the right fit. That's where Indeed Sponsored Jobs comes in. When workplace chaos hits and you need someone who can step in and make a difference, this is a job for sponsored jobs. It helps put your job in front of candidates who match the criteria that matter most to you, whether that's skills, experience, certifications or location. And you're certainly not alone in using Indeed. Join the 3.3 million employers worldwide that use Indeed to connect with quality talent that fits their needs. That's millions of businesses turning to Indeed

• 29:53Tracy V. Wilson?

  to help solve hiring challenges and find people who can help drive results. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Less stress, less time, more results. Get your $75 sponsored job credit today at indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring now, then this is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs.

• 30:26Holly Frey?

  So in this next section, there is a piece from an article that I'm going to read, which was written in 1906. It includes some language that is outdated and racist at this point, but I wanted to include it so you have a sense of how this whole thing was sort of romanticized and seen. And even while acknowledging that it was difficult, it kind of is written in this way that suggests like dashing adventure. Because even if a hunter did manage to find orchids and survive, collecting them and then getting to the next step was also really, really hard work. This is from a 1906 article which ran in the Washington DC Evening Star and was written by William George Fitzgerald, who wrote, quote, "For

• 31:08Holly Frey?

  difficult as it is to find rare orchids at all, the trouble only begins when the hunter discovers them. He must pack and prepare them for transportation by coulee and assam, by long-necked llama in the Andes, by raft or elephant, and contrive to get them thousands of miles across the ocean in such a condition that at least 20% of them will arrive with some vitality in them. And yet, 10,000 plants may be collected on some remote Andean peak or Papua an jungle with infinite care and consigned to Europe, the freight alone accounting for thousands of dollars. Yet on arrival, there may not be a single orchid left alive."

• 31:48Tracy V. Wilson?

  The plants themselves were also endangered by all the very mania that was driving all this orchid hunting. For one, when an orchid hunter found a new species, it was pretty standard practice to just dig up every single one to keep the find to themselves. On occasions, the hunters would also sabotage one another. Sander advised his men to urinate on other hunters' hauls if the opportunity arose to try to destroy their work. And needless to say, conservation of the ecological systems where they were hunting these orchids was not a priority at all.

• 32:22Holly Frey?

  No. Rosal, in particular, had kind of a reputation for being kind of sloppy and a little bit boorish and destructive in his collecting methods. By the 1920s, though, advancements were being made, both in cultivating orchids from seeds and by reproducing them through division, and that slowly drove down the delirium that had propelled all of those dangerous expeditions. Additionally, a lot of the men who had been drawn to the adventure of orchid hunting were dead, and the few who had survived were retired.

• 32:57Tracy V. Wilson?

  In 1917, the lady slipper orchid was declared extinct in Great Britain. The lady slipper, as its name suggests, has a little pouch that looks like the delicate toe of a slipper, and then above that pouch are normally three petals, with the topmost petal usually larger than the two that fall to the side. Often, there's a little twist. This flower is gold and burgundy, and orchid enthusiasts just could not help themselves when it came to cutting the flowers and digging them up, which often left them to die in the process.

• 33:31Holly Frey?

  In the 1930s, a single remaining lady slipper orchid was found growing wild in Great Britain in Yorkshire Dales. That was the last known wild orchid there. Not the last known wild one on Earth, just for clarity. And even though orchid delirium had calmed down to the point of nonexistence by the time of this discovery, that single plant kicked off a refreshed obsession, in part just because of the financial value of the plant. This was so intense that the plant had to be guarded by police and conservation-minded volunteers from plant hunters who might try to find it once its existence became public knowledge.

• 34:10Tracy V. Wilson?

  A group called the Syperpedium Committee, which was named after the plant's Latin name, formed to protect the plant in the immediate sense, and then also to set out a long-term plan for its well-being. They kept the exact location of that lady slipper orchid a secret, and that orchid is still alive today. In the late 1980s, scientists finally managed to propagate the plant and raise seedlings.

• 34:34Holly Frey?

  Those seedlings, once they reached a certain level of growth, were then planted at various other secret sites in northern England, although a lot of them did not live to maturation. The few that did survive had to be protected during the flowering season, just as that parent plant had. Eventually, a nature reserve in Lancashire was able to foster a lady slipper orchid population that was hardy enough that it is now open to visitors. So that location of the first one is still secret to most people.

• 35:04Tracy V. Wilson?

  So there's a real problem in the ongoing obsession with orchids, apart from all the problems that we've already been talking about.

• 35:13Holly Frey?

  Yeah, in the modern era, there are still people that hunt for orchids. If you saw the movie Adaptation or read the book it was adapted from, The Orchid Thief, there are still people that trade in this. Although Adaptation, I should say, is a very, very loose adaptation of that book.

• 35:30Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah, so apart from all the many problems we've already talked about, the problem that's keeping botanists from having the fullest range of information about orchids today is secrecy. When plants are discovered that are believed to be valuable, often they're kept totally secret in the interest of profit over science.

• 35:49Holly Frey?

  Today's orchid industry is estimated to be a $9 billion business annually. And there are, as I said, still people who smuggle orchids. But that, too, is problematic outside of any issues of morality or financial ethics. And that's because most orchids evolved in ways that require, as we mentioned earlier, very specific pollinators. It's not like you could take any given orchid and just kind of put it in with bees and let nature work it out. Not all orchids would work that way. So it's often difficult, even for botanists, to properly replicate the needs of these plants. So collectors, who are still willing to pay top dollar for one that is collected from the wild, that is maybe rare and exotic,

• 36:33Holly Frey?

  may in fact doom those very plants that they value so highly because care is so difficult that not everybody can manage it.

• 36:40Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah, and it also means that things that threaten their pollinators threaten the plants, too. It's all tied together.

• 36:46Holly Frey?

  Yes, there are a lot of stories, if you start digging, about ecological whoopsie daisies that happen when people are trying to... Collect an orchid, or there's an orchid that like comes and goes. I read one story and I, I did not write it down, so I don't have the details of its location exactly correct, but a botanist had seen this orchid and then had gone back to the place that it was some years later to study it some more, and it wasn't there anymore. And they had found out from a local that there was a fire and that there were frequent fires because of some industrialization in this swampland. And so they got all kinds of activism going

• 37:29Holly Frey?

  and sort of like stopped the industrial stuff that was causing those fires. And then it turned out that that particular orchid had evolved in a way that it needed a fire in its cycle every certain number of years. So even when we try to intercede in an ecologically sound way, sometimes it does not work with whatever orchid is being examined or desired.

• 37:51Tracy V. Wilson?

  Well, and of course, today you do not need to travel all over the world to get an orchid. You can buy them at the store.

• 38:00Tracy V. Wilson?

  You can order all kinds of them online at a wide variety of price points. Some of them are still going to cost you several thousand dollars, though.

• 38:10Holly Frey?

  Uh, yeah, I mean, it's again fascinating to me, the range that you can get an orchid for 15 bucks, if you're very low end, all the way up to, you know, many thousands of dollars. Also, I just, as a coda, wanted to mention that just in case you think you are not an orchid fan, or you're not into them, or you don't cross paths with them, next time you bite into a delicious slice of cake or a cookie, you might want to think of orchids because that's where vanilla comes from.

• 38:38Tracy V. Wilson?

  And vanilla is delicious and amazing.

• 38:41Holly Frey?

  It is. Those, uh, those brown flecks you see in like French, usually not French vanilla, because that's, that's refined in a way that you don't see the brown flecks. But in like natural vanilla things, those little brown flecks, those are orchid seeds.

• 38:56Holly Frey?

  And they are delicious.

• 39:03Tracy V. Wilson?

  Thanks so much for joining us on this Saturday. If you'd like to send us a note, our email address is [email protected]. And you can subscribe to the show on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 39:25Holly Frey?

  A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. In season seven of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, host Martine Hackett continues the conversation with people living with MG, CIDP, and the broader rare disease community, exploring what comes after diagnosis through stories of hope, progress, and connection. Produced by Ruby Studio in partnership with Argenx. Listen on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 39:56Tracy V. Wilson?

  Whether you're calling the wise women in your life, video calling your girlfriends across the country, or checking in on someone who always knows how to make you smile, staying connected matters. Those small conversations, shared laughs, and quick hellos are what keep relationships strong even when life gets busy. Some of the most life-giving conversations start with just a phone call. That's why AT&T guarantees the network you can rely on, so you can focus on the moments and people that matter most. That's the AT&T Guarantee. AT&T, connecting changes everything. Terms and conditions apply. Visit att.com/guarantee for details. Deanna Flores is a flag football star, a trailblazer, an entrepreneur, and now host of a new podcast.

• 40:37Holly Frey?

  In Born to Become with Deanna Flores, she's sitting down with people from every corner of culture to find the whole person behind the public identity.

• 40:46Tracy V. Wilson?

  Every episode, you'll get to know Deanna, her guests, and even yourself a little better. No lectures, no no-it-all hosts, just real people being real.

• 40:53Holly Frey?

  Listen to Born to Become with Deanna Flores, out now on the iHeart Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Created in partnership with Geico.

• 41:03Tracy V. Wilson?

  Long hours, work deadlines, family commitments, you give so much to everyone else, isn't it time to invest in yourself? The University of Arizona Global Campus is built for working adults with flexible online degree programs designed to fit your life. Your previous education, training, and eligible experience may even help you earn college credit. At UAGC, you can take one accelerated course at a time, helping you move toward your goals in five- and six-week class formats. Visit uagc.edu today.

• 41:35Speaker 07

  Livrite, publishers of John U. Bacon's New York Times bestseller, "The Gales of November: A Chronicle of the S. S. Edmund Fitzgerald's 1975 Shipwreck." "Never has it been told better than by Mr. Bacon in this colorful book," writes John J. Miller of The Wall Street Journal, while author Hampton Sides proclaims that it's destined to be a classic. "The Gales of November," now in paperback.

• 42:03Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.