Some 33 percent of the tepuis' known plants are endemic to the region. Most of the Lost World's wondrous botanical bounty lies on Mount Roraima.

Production credits for OBSESSION WITH ORCHIDS.

View additional resources, online and in print, for NATURE's "Obsession with Orchids."

Cloning allows breeders to turn one orchid plant into thousands, by harvesting a few cells from root tips and growing them in carefully prepared petri dishes.

In 1994, NEW YORKER magazine writer Susan Orlean traveled to Florida to cover a most unusual trial -- and ended up becoming entangled in the wondrous and sometimes treacherous world of orchids.

Pity the poor solitary bees that make their home on the sunny Mediterranean island of Majorca. Each spring, the males emerge from their underground lairs in eager search of a mate. Some find love with another buzzer, but others are made to look like fools -- by a flower.

No flowering plant has captured the attention of humans, or stirred their passions, in quite the way that orchids have.