Orchid Hunters

The pinnacle of orchid hunting activity was in the nineteenth century when prices for individual plants reached astonishing levels. Such were the profits to be made that many of the most active orchid hunters were directly employed by orchid nurseries in Britain and Europe. These were not the aristocratic administrators of empire; they were trained gardeners and horticulturalists who had a yearning to travel and see for themselves where the plants they nurtured had come from. In this book w...