Orchid Muse

A fascinating survey of one of the world's most intriguing (and provocative!) blooms, complete with lush illustrations and fascinating historical anecdotes. This book is an enchanting read for any gardener, house plant enthusiast, or history lover.--Jessica Roux, author of Floriography A fun fascinating romp through the history of the world's favorite flower.--Bruce Rogers, author of The Orchid Whisperer Erica Hannickel's gorgeously illustrated Orchid Muse is a reader's delight--crammed with fascinating stories about everything orchid, from the pleasure gardens of the Chinese Empress Cixi to the shoguns of feudal Japan, a nineteenth-century female science fiction author with a passion for botany, the dime museums of Manhattan's Tenderloin district, a little-known work by Charles Darwin, and the twelve-year-old slave boy who solved the mystery of vanilla pollination. This rich and delightful story of the voluptuous orchid is bound to convert all who encounter it to what the Victorians called orchidelirium.--Rebecca Rupp, author of How Carrots Won the Trojan War If flowers are how plants have sex, orchids are the sexiest 'harlot-nymphs' of them all, as Erica Hannickel reveals in this delightful and exquisitely explicit ode to orchidelirium.--Adam Leith Gollner, author of The Fruit Hunters