Orchid fever: 'It's like chasing a green-eyed woman or cocaine, it's a sort of madness' - The Irish Times
https://ift.tt/3ExDA0H Orchid fever: 'It's like chasing a green-eyed woman or cocaine, it's a sort of madness' - The Irish Times Orchid fever: 'It's like chasing a green-eyed woman or cocaine, it's a sort of madness' - The Irish Times Orchids, the most glamorous, exotic and alluring of plants, have long been a focus of fascination. Their seductive beauty attracts a kind of rare passion in collectors that can lead to adventure, but also to greed, criminality and death. At the National Botanic Gardens in Dublin there's a long tradition of keeping orchids. They were an obsession of the gardens' longest serving head, Sir Frederick Moore. He built on the work of his father, David Moore, who was credited as the first person to have raised flowering orchids from seed, and from whom he took over curatorship in 1879. He adored orchids and established Glasnevin as one of three international centres of excellence for the plants at the time. He was knighted ...