The non-fiction best-seller The Orchid Thief is one of the most acclaimed works of United States journalist and author Susan Orlean. As befits its title, The Orchid Thief is about a poacher of rare flowers whose life obsession is the Ghost Orchid, a magnificent endangered species. The book was masterfully adapted into the 2002 film Adaptation, which earned actor Chris Cooper an Academy Award for his acting performance as the titular thief.

As it happens, officers from Fuerza Pública (Costa Rica’s national police force) recently apprehended a 42-year old man by the last name of Sanchez, who was charged with an infraction of the Law on Protection of Wildlife.

The arrest took place in the rural sector of Vara Blanca, province of Heredia. According to a press release by Fuerza Publica, Sanchez was approached by officers on foot patrol near a nature preserve. The suspect was acting suspiciously as he clutched a suitcase, which on inspection by the officers was revealed to contained 66 orchids of various species.

Sanchez was detained and brought before prosecutors, who determined that every single orchid species carried by the suspect in the suitcase were protected species.

In the book The Orchid Thief, Susan Orlean studies passion and obsession as she describes the fascinating and compulsive world of orchid collectors, who are often supplied by renegade horticulturists and rogue botanists who cross paths with smugglers and poachers. A 2001 article by Christina Lamb of The Telegraph offered a glimpse into this world during an annual orchid festival in the United Kingdom:

In the world of plants, nothing arouses passions like an orchid. Collectors beg, steal and risk their lives in jungles and cloudforests to obtain the showiest or newest discovered bloom in what is now a £7 billion a year business.

So lucrative is it that organised crime syndicates specialising in smuggling rare specimens have sprung up and customs officers at Heathrow are specially trained to catch them.

One person who recently risked his life for a glimpse of a rare orchid is Tom Hart Dyke, a 24-year-old Briton known as the Indiana Jones of the orchid world. Travelling in Colombia with his friend Brian Winder, the pair were captured by guerrillas in the lawless Darien Gap region near the Panama border and held hostage in the jungle for nine months until December.