When New Yorkers flock to The Bronx this weekend for the New York Botanical Garden’s annual Orchid Show, they’ll be wowed by the ornate floral chandeliers hanging from the greenhouse ceiling, comprising thousands of orchid blooms.
But what plant lovers won’t see on display are the 2,000 rare and exotic orchids that the NYBG has rescued and rehabilitated from the orchid black market, which are kept in a separate greenhouse not open to the public.
“A few years ago, I received a group of plants from Vietnam that were labeled as [a common] species,” recalls Marc Hachadourian, director of the Nolen Greenhouses for Living Collections at the NYBG. As the plants were already on the brink of death, Hachadourian worked quickly to bring them back to life.
But once the flowers bloomed, it became clear that these breathtaking orchids weren’t common at all. In fact, they were one of the rarest species on the planet.
“All of a sudden the flower opened and I said, ‘Oh my goodness, that wasn’t what I expected!’ ” the 41-year-old horticulturalist from New Jersey says.
Turns out the plants weren’t labeled incorrectly by accident: They were part of the international illegal orchid trade — a black market akin to those that sell drugs, ivory and even human organs.
“All orchid species are listed in CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora),” explains Dr. Richard Thomas of TRAFFIC, a wildlife-trade monitoring network. This means that the same laws that protect Bengal tigers, black rhinos and Asian elephants from commercial trade also apply to all of the approximately 30,000 orchid species in existence today.
“[Orchids] are kind of like the pandas of the plant world, in that people have this wonderful attraction to them, and because of that, there are lots of conservation projects for them around the world,” adds Hachadourian.
He guesses that thousands of orchids — from common varieties such as the moth and cane orchid to exotic breeds such as yellow and purple lady slippers and the ghost orchid — pass through the black market each year. “There are rumors of plants selling for tens of thousands of dollars,” he says.
The industry is fueled by orchid “hoarders,” who will stop at nothing to get their hands on as many varieties as possible. “Some orchid types are in very high demand from specialist collectors — so much so that the locations of some species have never been disclosed in scientific literature,” says Thomas.
The lengths that collectors will go to grow their collections is a phenomenon captured in books like Susan Orlean’s “The Orchid Thief,” later turned into the 2002 film “Adaptation,” starring Meryl Streep, Nicolas Cage and Chris Cooper.
Once the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) takes possession of these black-market plants, they are immediately sent to one of about 65 orchid rescue centers in the country — of which the NYBG is one.
“In most cases the plants arrive in a severely dehydrated state,” says Hachadourian, a 14-year NYBG veteran.
Overall, he has a 70 percent success rate with rehabilitating the seized orchids. The NYBG currently keeps about 2,000 behind closed doors at its Bronx headquarters, though they remain property of the USDA.
“Rather than see the plants be destroyed, or become Exhibit A in a legal case, they’re able to be brought to our greenhouse where we can propagate them and use them for research,” says Hachadourian.
“Our purpose is not to get rare plants. It’s to save these plants from, in most cases, death.”
The Orchid Show: Chandeliers opens Saturday. 2900 Southern Blvd., The Bronx; nybg.org
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