Orchid Hunter on PBS/NOVA tonight (Nov 26) and online
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» EricWard - Orchid Hunter on PBS/NOVA tonight (Nov 26) and online
PBS/NOVA Site Announcement--------------------------
Orchid Hunter
http://www.pbs.org/nova/orchids/
Some People Will Kill For Orchids, Others
Will Die For Them
NOVA and NOVA online explore the science and
insanity behind orchids with Orchid Hunter
broadcast and Web site. The program airs tonight
(Tuesday, November 26) at 8 PM ET on PBS
(check local listings).
For nine months in 2000, Tom Hart-Dyke was a captive
of guerrillas who seized him while he was collecting
wild orchids in the Colombian rain forest. Now Hart-Dyke
is at it again in the most orchid-rich and politically
unstable part of Papua New Guinea. NOVA investigates
an all-consuming passion that for some people is more
precious than life itself, on Orchid Hunter, airing
Tuesday, November 26, 2002 at 8 PM ET on PBS.
The companion web site, located at
http://www.pbs.org/nova/orchids/,
offers unique content including an Orchid Gallery where
users can sample the surprising diversity of shapes and
colors in this collection of 15 different orchid species.
Ranging from the scientific to the sociological, Orchid
Hunter covers research at the forefront of plant
biology and gives insights from New Yorker staff
writer Susan Orlean, author of The Orchid Thief—
“a lesson in the dark, dangerous, sometimes hilarious
nature of obsession,” according to USA Today, and an
inspiration for the soon-to-be-released movie
Adaptation, starring Meryl Streep and Nicolas Cage.
Long of interest to scientists because of their remarkable
evolutionary history, orchids are equally exciting to
collectors, who have made them a multibillion-dollar
industry. Orchid lovers were recently dazzled by the
discovery of a spectacular new species in Peru. With a
magenta and purple blossom as big as a human hand, the
flower has plant breeders eagerly anticipating a lucrative
new line of flashier-than-ever orchids. The dream of
discovering and naming such a crowd-pleaser drives some
enthusiasts to desperate measures.
“I know that it’s got political problems,” says tireless
orchid hunter Hart Dyke about his latest destination, Papua
New Guinea. “I know there’s a lot of guerrilla activity
there; I know that the terrain is terrible, and the diseases
are rife, but that’s why it’s such a good place to go. If
you want to find a new species of orchid, you’ve got to go
to places that are dangerous because no one else goes there.”
Prime motivation for the twenty-five-year-old amateur
botanist is the chance to make a discovery that he can
name after his grandmother, who taught him on the family
estate in England to love horticulture. NOVA accompanies
Hart-Dyke on his quest, which he well knows has a tradition
of gruesome outcomes.
In 1901 eight orchid hunters went on an expedition to the
Philippines. Within a month one was eaten by a tiger,
another was drenched with oil and burned alive, five
vanished never to be seen again, and one walked out of
the forest with seven thousand orchid specimens. More
recently, a botanical party in Papua was held hostage by
insurgents for four months, and two of their members were
beheaded when the Indonesian army attempted a rescue.
Orchids are one of the most ancient flowering plants;
they evolved a survival strategy that dispersed them to
every continent except Antarctica.
They now number more than twenty-five thousand species,
each with an intricate relationship to animal pollinators
(usually insects) and fungi in the soil. Fungi supply both
nutrients for the growing orchid and food for the seed,
allowing the plants to survive in habitats with poor or
even no soils.
This close relationship to insects and fungi makes orchids
vulnerable to extinction, which is why Hart-Dyke’s first
order of business on arriving in Papua is to hire a local
forester with a permit to collect orchids. All wild
orchids are protected by CITES (the Convention on
International Trade in Endangered Species). Hart-Dyke also
enlists the services of Papua’s two leading orchid experts.
Counting NOVA, that makes a party about the size of the
ill-fated 1901 Philippine expedition. But then, one person
survived that trip—and with a plethora of flower samples to
boot.
Among orchid addicts, that’s all that matters.
-- posted by EricWard
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