Vertigo
Richard Rudgley: Plant obsessions, 15 July 1999
The Orchid Thief: A True Story of Beauty and Obsession
by Susan Orlean.
Heinemann, 348 pp., £12.99, April 1999,0 434 00783 8 Show More
by Susan Orlean.
Heinemann, 348 pp., £12.99, April 1999,
Plants of Life, Plants of Death
by Frederick Simoons.
Wisconsin, 568 pp., £27.95, September 1998,0 299 15904 3 Show More
by Frederick Simoons.
Wisconsin, 568 pp., £27.95, September 1998,
“... aberration is barely credible.’ Why people avoid some plants and revere others is the subject of Frederick Simoons’s meticulous study of the ancient religious roots from which comparatively modern manifestations such as orchidodelirium and tulipomania ultimately derive. To someone like me, largely concerned to investigate the role of drug plants now ... ”