In March of last year, police officers patrolling the Upala sector in the northern region of Costa Rica made a botanical arrest. A man was caught with 112 members of the Orchidaceae family that he was furtively trying to smuggle. The suspect attempted to confound the Fuerza Publica (Costa Rica’s national police) officers with flowery speech; alas, he was taken into custody and his cargo of epiphytes was seized for further transplantation back to their habitat.

The suspect in the case mentioned above was lucky to not have been found in possession of Guarianthe skinneri, an Epidendreae that is known in Costa Rica as the guaria morada, the national flower. Still, investigators from the Ministry of the Environment estimated that the 112 monocotyledons confiscated were valued at about $3,000. For this reason, security was tight at the National Orchid Exhibit, which culminated on March 2^nd. Nearly 3,000 orchids from Costa Rica and from all over the world were proudly on display at the Antigua Aduana (Old Customs Building) in San Jose.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of orchids were enjoyed by nearly 6,000 visitors over the weekend. Members of the Costa Rican Orchid Association were pleased at the growing interest in this field. In early 2014, a similar success was experienced in Grecia, province of Alajuela, were tourists were impressed with the 900-strong display of orchids, most of them native to Costa Rica.

Flower tourism and other types of botanical appreciation are travel segments that are just now beginning to blossom, so to speak, in Costa Rica. A recent blog post at award-winning travel site BreatheDreamGo tells about a recent flower excursion organized by EcoAdventure Media that focused on flower photography:

DO YOU LOVE flowers? Who doesn’t? They are just one of the many beauties of nature that Costa Rica is famed for.

I traveled to Costa Rica with six of my colleagues from EcoAdventureMedia in December 2013, and we each followed our own itineraries throughout the verdant country. Collectively, we saw and photographed an astounding variety of animals, plants, flowers, wildlife, birds and landscapes. Costa Rica is truly a paradise for nature lovers — and it helps that the government is committed to sustainable tourism and ecotourism.

Appreciating flowers in the wild is the best way to enjoy them in Costa Rica, but orchid exhibits and botanical gardens are good alternatives. The Lankester Botanical Gardens in Paraiso, province of Cartago, are always a pretty good bet in this regard. These gardens are overlooked by many tourists, which makes them even more attractive to flower lovers.