Book Corner > Books about planthunters

what did them move?

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greenfinger:
When I read a book or article about planthunters I'm always puzzled about their drive. They travelled in discomfort, danger for own life, dirt, you name it.  I find them a bit strange, perhaps even complicated characters. What did they do it for? Greed, need for recognition, addiction to high adrenaline levels, their love for plants and foreign countries...? What do we still know about them? Freqently only a few plants named after them.
All the elements that make a good novel are in the books of their lives and accomplishments. That's why I like to read them.

Pixydish:
I have just finished reading The Orchid Thief: A True Story of Beauty and Obsession by Susan Orlean (1994). This is a very interesting book which outlines the history of orchid collecting, including a great deal of information about wealthy collectors from England who would send their 'men' across the seas to hunt orchids for them. After reading this book, I am amazed that there is a single wild orchid left anywhere on the planet.
 The author spent two years following a very eccentric plant dealer, John Laroche, who had been arrested, along with some Seminole Indians, for poaching rare orchids out of a south florida swamp. She weaves the story of this extremely strange man in with the enitre history of orchid collecting and then explores the world of orchid fanatics and the politics of orchid hybridizing. A fascinating book.

greenfinger:
I recently read the book "Seeds of Fortune. A gardening dynasty' by Sue Shephard and with a foreword by Roy Lancaster. Its subject are the Veitch family: most important European cultivators and hybridisers in the 19th century. Their work would have been impossible without the planthunters on their pay-roll.
Published by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, London, 2003.
ISBN 0 7475 6066 8

Pixydish:
I have seen this book on the shelf at our local library several times and each time have been in the middle of researching something else, so didn't check the book out. Now I will go get it and give it a read!

greenfinger:
Nice girl to take the advice of a nonagenarian to heart. The oldies are not yet finished!

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