The Hunt for "The Lost Orchid"

FAIN: FT-285914-22

Sarah R. Bilston
Trinity College (Hartford, CT 06106-3100)

Research and writing leading to a book on the history, economics, cultural influence, and scientific impact of orchids in Victorian England.  

My new book (under contract with Harvard University Press) follows the hunt for Cattleya Labiata—aka “The Lost Orchid”—as a means of investigating afresh the rise of consumerism and collection culture in the nineteenth century, the shifting meanings of the orchid in Victorian visual and literary texts, the intersection of Big Science and Big Business, and the power of colonial profit-making. Bringing Darwin into fresh focus, too, my project reminds us that the dark side of scientific progress is too often the exploitation of indigenous cultures and the rape of the natural environment. Plant-hunters took what they wanted from the land: we continue to pay for it, while reproducing their mistakes as we grab without considering the fragility of our ecosystems. The Hunt for the Lost Orchid uncovers a story that thrilled and astonished the Victorians, then, but it’s also a warning to us all as we face down environmental cataclysm.