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the twenty eleven tulip mania episode that Sarah into Billina did. You know Eddie that sometimes people go a little mad mare obsessions when it comes to plants and today. 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 will also brushes up against our episode on Joseph Paxton and the Crystal Palace, because Paxton also cultivated gardens and built a conservatory for William Cavendish. The six Duke of Devon sure also as the bachelor Duke and in that job he gathered the largest collection in England for his royal employer. The bachelor duke had also fallen victim to orchid the

area, 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. So orchids date back at least twenty million years and two thousand and and a b was discovered. It was preserved, an amber and dated back that far and also still had orchid pollen stuck to its wings of fossilized. Orchid from New Zealand is dated back twenty one million years, it's possible that orchids existed as far as the leg cretaceous period around eighty million years ago, or maybe even longer. Yes, so they survived when the dinosaurs did not. Kids grow all over the world. The only inhospitable areas are open water, true deserts and glaciers, and there are species of did that grow from the ground. But a lot of varieties are appetites, meaning that they grow on other plants or rocks some even grow on fungus. They are sometimes

mention is being parasitic. That's not actually the case there getting their nutrients the around them. They just kind of need, a place to perch and unsurprisingly, for plant family that can thrive in so many differ, places, there is a vast range of species of Orkut. There are more than twenty seven thousand species of orchid. Some sources will is. That number is even higher more are being discovered all the time. This incredible range makes the taxonomy of the Orkut AC, challenging the flowers of orchids. Can rain from single flowering plants to multiple blooms on stock, and this is the most diverse flower, family, Orkut, they're, usually pollinated by infects or birds, and the plants have evolved to make them elves as appealing as possible to their pollinators a lot of times the plants have pedal or leaf shapes that enable pollinators to rest on the plant, while they're making a visit

an estimated one. Third of orchids species have figured out some kind of trickery to ensure their propagation, so there varieties that look and smell like female bees, so that solitary males will come in spread their pollen around the Dracula. Orchid attracts insects that usually dung by emitting a lot of different horrifying smells that reproduce the sense of not just animal excrement, but also urine and decaying meet yeah. That's one of those plants where I will admit just because I like forgive me by virtue of being called the Dracula Orkut, I'm like yes and then knowing what it smells like hard pass. This Orkut has a really unique structure. That first offers inviting drink from its pouch like structure that flicked the pebble on the bottom is kind of shaped like a little pouch, and then that will trap insects attracted

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 Poland, Greens Belinda, and then once free when that insect is drawn to the next bloom. Those Colin Greens are deposited in new ones, are picked up and so on. A single orchid plant can produce as many seventy four million seems and in the wild. They require exposure to a symbiotic fungus to germinate an controlled conditions, like nurseries and home germination, especial growing medium is used. Instead, orchids can also propagate asexually through division when a single plant splits into two actively growing pieces. Yet that division approach was used a lot by some of the people that we 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,

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 have aphrodisiac qualities in ancient Greece. They were used to flavour food, but the Aztecs, and they have been, in traditional chinese medicine for centuries to treat everyone from lung and kidney disease to tonsillitis and even cancer. While study In the anger comes Escobar, Dalai, Charles Darwin came to, conclusion of this flower, which has a really deep bloom and then Nectar II, which is the globular organ secrete nectar, sometimes its deepest thirty centimeter which is a little over eleven enters. They concluded that it must have evolved, Long five, a moth species that have a unique trait to allow it to be pollinated.

There to explain how this flower, with this very deep well, could be pollinated. He theorized that a moth must have a preposterous that could extend up to almost the length of the entire flowers death. In this particular bit of orchid study, has become really famous because co evolution at this point was a very new idea, an because dark. Did not have a moth specimen to back up this theory Darwin died in eighteen. Eighty two, without ever having his hypothesis confirmed in ninety Seven, though a sub species of the giant Congo Mars, which came for Madagascar, just as Darwins Orchid samples had was discovered. This moth sub species named Ex Morganti predictor, was approximately sixteen centimetres from Wing Tipp to winked if they had a preposterous, which sat COS on its head and then could extend twenty centimetres or more. It seem to fit the bill.

But it wasn't until nineteen ninety two more than a century after Darwin's death that scientists we're fine We able to actually observe and capture footage of these large ma pollinating those orchids. They look three cool. It does its really meet what's important for today's shell, in terms of the work that Darwin was doing with kids? Is that it all happened in the second half of the nineteenth century and at the same time, particularly in Victorian England, Orchid delirium was becoming a significant phenomena. Botanist, William John Swainson is often credited with introducing or goods 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 and or of other plant samples to ship back home to England in the eighteen teens, and he unbelievable orchids, which he believed at the time to be weeds as packing material and the orchids blue

either on 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 as great Britain continued to expand its power through colonization, exoticism Flora 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 Cottage industry grew to fill this expanding demand for these blooms and the second half of the nineteenth century saw the business of orchid collecting, growing and selling reaching cut throat levels of competition An coming up. We are going to talk about a man who came to be known as the orchid king, but first we're gonna pause forward from one of our sponsors.

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one of the most famous entrepreneurs to capitalize on orchid delirium was Frederick Sander Sand, was born in Germany in eighteen, forty seven than at the age of twenty. 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 Czechoslovakia and botanist named Benedict Rosalie, and before long the two men decided to go into business together. Rosa was more twenty years older than sander, you ve been working with plant since he was twelve first as an apprentice garden and then tending the gardens of european aristocracy in eighteen fifty he had moved to Mexico and set up a hemp nursery, but he had an act but there was a machine that he invented the clean hemp fibre and severed one of his hands. He went back to Europe before switching careers to become plant hunter, any replaced that lost him

with a hook and according to lead, and I gave him some added cachet on his adventures yeah. He apparently was very tall striking man to begin with a man when he had his soul, can it kind of fulfils every like victorian romantic novel fantasy of like a rough and rugged person he is kind of talk to other way. Even today, when you read about him in books about orchids, Rosamond Sander, he had been collecting plants abroad for some time, but he had never had a partner who could receive them and So the inventory back home trend that he would have to travel back and forth with the plants and cut down on his time to collect because he had been a one man operation. His success was modest, but once Rosalie teamed up with sander that changed rapidly, the two of them set up shop and the Saint Alban's District North of London Sander Haddock

rate ahead for business and Rosalie 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 or and volumes that were way beyond anything they had done before they had a warehouse adjacent to their shop. That was literally pact to the rafters, with stock Rosa worked for decades with sand are making trips all over the world to collect org. Before he retired a very wealthy man with dozens of plants named after him and having discovered more than eight hundred different species in eighteen. Seventy three frederick Sander built his first greenhouse so that he could cultivate his own siblings as well as importing stock, but within a few years it became obvious that he was really quickly going to deplete that space. So an eighty eight why 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 twenty three men to travel the globe and find him new plants He also wrote a four volume compendium of orchids, titled Reichenbach IA orchids illustrated and described it had illustrations by Henry George Moon, which our beautiful it described almost two hundred species of orchid and was published over the course of several years in the late eighteen eighties. In eighteen, eighty six sander became Queen Victoria's official royal orchid grower but which also gave his business a boost. He had also, incidentally, dedicated one of the volumes of Reichenbach here 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 and orkut 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 eighteen. Ninety six, too, before he got rid of that north american nursery. He had opened another nursery outside of Bruce Belgium and the belgian and her prize being much closer to London was more easily manageable for sander, he could go where they are and stay for a while and handle things, but also quickly travel back home to oversee things in the London Office and that Belgium, off his quickly expanded just as his english compound had? I think it too ended up with about five dozen greenhouses and now also diversified, a lot and carried a ring The wide variety of plants, including azaleas, lilies and palms Santer, was well respected. He had a reputation as an honest, direct and energetic businessman. Is love of organs

It 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, 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 and orchid to a lawyer from Liverpool for twelve dollars, which already was probably not the tiniest amount you could imagine being for a flower then five years later, that attorney sold it back to him for a thousand awhile thunder. Join the wheeling and dealing perceiving shipments and tending the nurseries, the member

with sending out into the world to find me were, were literally risking their lives to give a sense of just how perilous this work was. According to the book, the woodlands orchids written by Frederick Boil and published in nineteen o one French Orkut Hunter Leon. Humboldt had relate to the author that, while he was collecting orchids in Madagascar arm, he and his brother had hosted a dinner intimate ave which is now known work Only I believe, is Toma Siena and twelve months after that dinner Leon. Humboldt was the only man from that table left alive, as Orkut hunters made way around the globe. They re he really often met with bad ends some of them were murdered, saw them, died after run with wild animals. A lot of them died of tropical diseases and some of them just honest here, and there were instances where they were murdered, sometimes by other plant hunters. This was really very cut: throat, business Hunter William

drowned in the arena Co River in Venezuela, while he was hunting or specimens, and that was after he, barely avoided a high probability of death dual with another orchid hunter over a disagreement, the dual never actually quite happened, but they were right up to it even Bennydeck. Rosalie, who was very successful at all of this met with grave misfortune and his travels. He was robbed gun or knifepoint, or sometimes both seventeen times over his career, his nephew, France's that clock died of yellow fever after the two of them went on an expedition together, William Nicolaides was one of Sanders. 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 Sandra that the trip had gone, really awry any wanted return to England to regroup and sand are all told him. No now stay, they are go back, collect more samples and at once, even sent him to Colombia when the country was very dangerous

Travelin due to violent internal conflict that conflict event. Go on for a long long time, but there were times when it escalated and Santer did not care. He just sent him to get more flowers. There was a particularly violent experience in Papua New Guinea and which Mikel its witnessed several beheadings dismemberments, and that left him really shaken and desperate to go back home, but on orders he stayed therein found more orchids. He survived his career as an organ hunter, but he didn't wind up retiring in style. He was almost destitute when he died com in Germany. It there's one story and I feel like we should mention in all of these stories that the people there were telling them where the men who survived. So there is so the probability that some embellishment may have happened in this case Micheletti did survive, but there story that at one point here, had been in the midst of an area that had had a lot of violence.

A long time due to various internal conflicts, we had wanted to leave. Sanderson come back and handed at finding this orchid that was really prize, but it was growing on a dead body, so he had to kind of steel lives off just to collect the flower that poor man to me, this seems lake, so abused in that relationship, but another Orkut Hunter Albert Milk had several successful expeditions and he actually penda very popular book about his job. Titled travels and adventures of an orchid hunter Unfortunately, he took one too many trips. He was stabbed to death on his last mission in the Andes. In contrast, there was a pair of brothers, William and Thomas Lob, who worked as plant hunters for bites nurseries. They both man to retire from plant hunting, rather than dying on the job. While there are definite,

a number of business dramas in their lives, and there was a great deal of adventure, the two of the bandage travelling separately to collect a wide variety of plant species. A lot of them are still can running gardens today and they died after settling bow after their wilder exploits yeah. I actually have some plans to do an episode just on the two of them have been. Not so does the future, 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. This episode of stuff you missed in history class is brought to you by Norton three hundred and sixty with Lifelock your shopping online with your smartphone. It's super feels, like your personal information, is just right there in your hand, but that's not always the case, because, as soon as you hit submit your personal info

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So in this next section there is a piece from an article that I'm going to read, which is written, one thousand nine hundred and six. It include 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 Rome. Sized and singing, and even while acknowledging that it was difficult. It kind of his written in this way. That suggests like dashing adventure, because even if aid, the hunter did manage to find orchids answer, I've collecting them and then getting to the next step was also really really hard work. This is from a ninety, six article which reign in the Washington DC evening STAR was written by William George Fitzgerald, who wrote quote for difficult as it is to find her your orchids at all. The trouble only begins when the hunter discovers them. He must pack and prepare them for transport.

Haitian by coolly and awesome, by long Lama and the Andes by raft or elephants and contrived to them thousands of miles across the ocean in such a condition that at least twenty percent of them will arrive with some vitality in them, and yet ten thousand plants may be collected on summer, mode andean peak or pop one jungle with infinite care and consigned to Europe, the freight alone, accounting for thousands of dollars yet honor I've all there may not be a single orchid left alive. The plants themselves were also danger by all the very mania it was driving. All those orchid hunting for what would an orchid hunter found a new species. It was pretty standard practice to just dig up every single one to keep the fine to themselves on occasion. The hunters would also sabotaged one another sander advise his

and answer urinate. Another hunters halls of 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. No, Rosalie 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 nineteen twenties, though, advancements were being made both in cultivating orchids from seeds and by report. Sing them through division and that slowly drove down the delirium that had propelled all of those dangerous expeditions, additionally,

lot of the men who have been drawn to the adventure of Oregon hunting or dead, and the few could survived were retired and one thousand nine hundred and seventeen. The lady slipper orchid was declared extinct and great Britain. The lady slipper, as its name suggests, have a little pouch that looks like the delicate toe of a slipper and then above that, pouch are normally three pedals, with the top most pedal, usually larger than the two that fall to the side off of his little twist. This flower is gold, and burgundy and orchid enthusiasts just could not help them when it came to cutting the flowers and digging them up, which often left them to die in the process. In the nineteen thirties, a single remaining Ladys slipper orchid was found growing wild in great Britain in Yorkshire Dales. I was the last known, wild orchid they're, not the last known wild. What on earth

for clarity and even though orchid delirium had come down to the point of non existence 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. A group called the Cypripedium Committee which, named after the plants, latin name form to protect the plant and the immediate sense, and then also to set out a long term plan for its well being. They kept the exact location of that ladies slipper Orchid, a secret and that work. It is still alive today and wait. Nineteen eighties scientists finally managed to propagate the plant and raise seedlings, though seedlings once they reached a certain level of growth.

Where 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 current plant have 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 visitor so that location of the first one is still secret to most people there is a real problem in the ongoing obsession with orchids. Apart from all the problems, We ve already been talking about. You know, In the modern era, there are still people that hunt for orchids. If you saw movie adaptation or read the book. It was adapted from the orchid leave. There are still people that trade in this. Although adaptation I should say, is a very, very loose hesitation that bark death. So,

word from all the many problems we have already talked about the problem that keeping botanists from having the fullest, range of information about orchids. Today is secrecy when plants are discovered, but our belief, to be valuable off in their care totally sacred in the interest of profit over science. Today's orkut industry is S it is to be a nine billion dollar business annually and there are, as I said, still people who smuggle orchids, but that too is poor. Automatic outside of any issues of morality or financial ethics, and thus because most orchids evolved in ways that require as we mentioned earlier very specific pollinators, it's not like you could take any given Orkut and just kind of put it in with bees and wet nature work it out. Not all orchids would work that way, so is 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 may be rare and exotic may in fact doom those very plants that they value so highly, because care is so difficult that not everybody can manage it, and it also means that things that threaten their pollinators threaten the plants to It's all tied together. Yes, there are a lot of stories if you start digging about like ecological whoops, daisies that happen when people are trying to collect and Org did 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 Maybe it's a more and it wasn't there any more and they had found out from alone that there was a fire and that there were

frequent fires because of some industrialization in this swamp land, and so they got all kinds of. Activism going and sort of like stopped the industrial stuff that was causing those fires, and then it turned out that that particular Orkut evolves in a way that it needed a fire in its cycle every certain number of years. So even we try to intercede in an ecologically sound way. Sometimes it does not work with whatever Orkut is being examined or desired. Why, of course, today you do not need to travel all over the world to get an orchid. You can buy them at the store. You can order all kinds of them online at him for a wide variety of price points. Some of them are still going to cost you several thousand is there a year. I mean it's again fascinating to me the range that you can do that argued verve fifteen bucks, if you're very low in all the way up to you now many thousands of dollars

also I just as a code. I wanted to mention that, just in case you think you're not an orchid pham or you're not into them. We don't cross paths for 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 and familiar Delicious that amazing it is those those brown flex you see in, like french needle in French, vanilla, cassettes, that's refined in a way that you don't see the brown flag but unlike natural, vanilla things, those little Brenner, blacks are orchid seeds and they are delicious. Do you also some listener mail for us I do and because we landed this orchid discussion on food, I thought I would do a list there was about food is about. One of our older episodes is former listener. Brittany and she says hi Holly Tracy. First and foremost, I have to thank you both for the hours of Lowe's learning and laughing. You brought me over the past year and a half. I discovered this

early last year, when my mom was the hospital recovering. I hope her mom is doing great now, through the drives to and from the hospital time it's been sitting and waiting and nice. I cannot sleep. Y'all are my companions. I felt like I had two new friends sharing a new love of Disney and Fashion with Holly and the home state connection with Tracy North Carolina. I'm sure I a little bit, I'm laughing to myself on my commute and sitting alone in public. But now I can't wait for my time in the car to catch up on old and new episodes alike. I'm working my way through the archives, and I just listened to your episode of brief history of peanut butter, and I found myself craving my mom's favorite The butter base tree and I wanted to share it with the all in case she felt like some adventurous baking. I was raised in the house with my grandmother, a southern cook who grew up during the depression. Thus, I developed a fondness for some foods. My friends found pretty odd seed, Anna and Mayo sandwiches and pear salad with mayo and parmesan cheese lot of mayo I'm here, even I

thrown off when one Christmas, my mom taught me how to make her favorite candy potato candy. This confection is made of mashed potatoes, powdered sugar and, of course, peanut butter. I have included a link your recipe very similar to my mom's. Let me know if you have the chance to make it and what you think I have not done so yet, but it sure is on my list now, because I love making crazy thing. I love potatoes I do too, am I like candy, not always in a sweet tooth mood, but when I am looking That sounds really interesting, so I will weaken post the link to that recipe. In our shone out. So we can all try making potato case the hit, but if we which- but thank you so much, Brittany vessels really yummy and fun. I'm a big fan of pudding, crazy stuff together on sandwiches as well young. Now I literally just thinking about sandwiches, so give me a minute. You would like the right do, as you can

so at history, Pike has to house to work start com. You can also find us on social media as missed in history pretty much everywhere, and our website is missed in history that calm and there you will find. Episode of the show. That's ever existed, plus show notes for any other ones that Tracy and I have worked on and on a whole lot more so come and visit us missed in history. That com for more on this and thousands of other topics visit, has therefore start com. This episode is brought to you right, Norton, lifelong, when you shop, bearing can browse with your smartphone. It feels like your personal info is right, bearing hand, but when you hit submit it can go far away, leaving you potentially vulnerable to cyber criminals. More threats demand more protection. Norton three sixty with life lock, is an all in one. Cyber safety meant

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