Download The Scent of Scandal: Greed, Betrayal, and the World's Most Beautiful Orchid AudioBook Free
Following its Peruvian breakthrough in 2002, Phragmipedium kovachii became the rarest and most sought-after orchid in the world. Prices soared to $10,000 on the dark-colored market. The other showed up at Marie Selby Botanical Landscapes, where yearly more than 100,000 people visit. They come for the lush landscaping on Sarasota Bay as well as for Selby's vast orchid collection, one of the very most magnificent in the world. The collision between Selby's scientists and the smugglers of Phrag. kovachii, a unusual ladyslipper orchid hailed as the utmost significant and beautiful new kinds discovered in a hundred years, resulted in search warrants, a grand jury analysis, and legal charges. It made headlines around the united states, cost the backyards thousands of dollars in donations, and resulted in tremendous inside turmoil. Investigative journalist Craig Pittman unravels this tangled web to stand out a spotlight on imperfections in the international treaties governing trade in endangered wildlife-which may protect specific plants and animals in shipping and delivery but do little to prevent the damage of complete colonies in the wild. The Scent of Scandal unspools like a riveting mystery novel, stranger than anything in Susan Orlean's The Orchid Thief or the film Version. Pittman shows how a lot of people may become so obsessed-with beauty, with income, with fame-that they will disregard everything, even regulations.
