Travels and Adventures of an Orchid Hunter

Between 1887 and 1891, Albert Millican made five trips to the orchid-rich areas of South America, concentrating on the Northern Andes. It was a time of orchid mania when a rare specimen could fetch around $25,000 in today's money. Prospectors shipped millions of orchid bulbs to Europe knowing less than one percent would survive the journey. The reasons for this sudden interest in orchids have several overlapping explanations: the ascension of the modern greenhouse; Darwin's work on the coevolution of insects and orchids; and a broader Victorian fascination with curios collected from around the world. In Millican's book we get a first-hand look at what it took to locate, identify, and transplant these ephemeral beauties from the slopes of the Andes to a nation halfway across the globe.