Orchidelirium

The Dutch had Tulip Mania in the 17th century, Victorian England had its own equivalent with 'orchidelirium,' an obsessive passion for orchids that has carried into the present day. Orchids remain among the most beautiful, hotly debated, and passionately collected of all flowers, as Susan Orlean chronicled brilliantly in her book The Orchid Thief (Ballantine Books, 2000), reinterpreted as the hit movie Adaptation.

Orchidelirium presents Harold Feinstein's breathtaking pictures of orchids -- dozens of different varieties and shades of them. In the tradition of the critically acclaimed gift book One Hundred Flowers (Bulfinch Press, 2000), this new volume offers images of staggering detail and subtlety. Nobody has been able to match Feinstein's mastery of flower photography, and nowhere is his remarkable talent as evident as it is in these pictures of orchids, nature's most delicate and variegated creations.