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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 one of the most politically unstable parts of Irian Jaya, the
western half of the island of New Guinea.
In "Orchid Hunter," NOVA investigates an all-consuming passion that
for some people seems to be more precious than life itself. Ranging
from the scientific to the sociological, the program covers research
at the forefront of plant biology and gives insights from
New Yorker staff writer Susan Orlean, author of
The Orchid Thief.
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, Irian Jaya. "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 25-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 and were never
seen again, and one walked out of the forest with 7,000 orchid
specimens. More recently, a botanical party in New Guinea 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 25,000 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 Irian Jaya 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. The program chronicles his discoveries in one of the last
intact rainforest wildernesses left on Earth.
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