Orlean reviews the history of orchid collecting and some of the eccentric figures involved in it. Orchids had been cultivated and collected in China for thousands of years before they became a craze in Europe. They first arrived from explorers of the tropics in the 18th century, but it was not until the 19th century that they really gained popularity. In the Victorian era, wealthy collectors in England would hire adventurous orchid hunters to travel the world and bring back rare species of orchids.

Orchid hunting was not for the faint of heart. Orlean describes it taking place in the midst of wars and natural disasters like earthquakes. The hired orchid hunters were often ruthless in their competition with one another. They might take every orchid they found in an area and then burn it down for good measure—just to make sure no one else got any. Huge quantities of plants were shipped back to England, both because of greed and because so many died en route.

In the mid-1800s, a collector named William Spencer Cavendish had a strong influence on the direction of orchid collecting. Until then, it had still been a small endeavor by a handful of people.