The Scent of Scandal: Greed, Betrayal and the World's Most Beautiful Orchid (The Florida History and Culture Series) [Hardcover]

Investigative journalist Craig Pittman had covered plenty of crazy people by the time he stepped onto the tranquil grounds of Sarasota's Marie Selby Botanical Gardens to report on a case of orchid smuggling in 2003.

There was the triple killer he interviewed on Death Row who took to writing him letters with smiley faces dotting the i's. There was the woman so in love with manatees she left a date to wade into the water with them fully clothed, then tackled a major political campaign on their behalf. Pittman's second book even had crazy in the name: "Manatee Insanity."

But none of that came close to the maniacal obsession to possess and name a new orchid discovered growing on a hillside in northern Peru. The petals of Phragmipedium kovachii stretch up like hot-pink fairy wings poised to soar away with the swollen pouch that makes it a "slipper orchid." The story of how it got to Selby, and how reputable scientists lost their minds in the race to be first to describe it, makes for incredible reading in "The Scent of Scandal: Greed, Betrayal, and the World's Most Beautiful Orchid."

If it were fiction, "The Scent of Scandal" might be skewered for improbability: A Ph.D. taxonomist named Guido who punches out a cop. Not one but two collectors trying to pitch the idea of a wild-orchid-hunter reality show -- starring themselves as the macho leading man.

Pittman is on staff at the Tampa Bay Times, where he has established himself as one of the nation's top environmental reporters. He came to the beat more than 20 years ago on staff at the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. Local readers will appreciate his insights into the city's unique history and society scene. He recounts Selby's dazzling Orchid Ball, where in spring 2002, "real estate moguls and mortgage-rate gamblers rubbed shoulders with theater angels and gallery geeks." The revelers could not have imagined the resentments blooming among Selby's "orchid boys" who felt the institution had strayed too far from their showy obsession under then-director Meg Lowman.

Lowman, a renowned rainforest biologist, was out of town when collector Michael Kovach rushed to Selby from Miami International Airport with the prize that would soon be named for him. Those who were on duty at Selby's Orchid Identification Center on the day they now curse could seem to think only of fame. The Selby orchid illustrator's first thoughts: "... great publicity if handled correctly, which would stir the sleeping board members and demonstrate that we actually existed."

The one thing that didn't come to mind: Making absolutely sure that Kovach had legally brought the orchid home from the Peruvian wilds.

Pittman's two previous books are also about vanishing, vulnerable icons of nature -- first wetlands, then manatees -- and our failure to protect them. His incisive reporting leaves the reader astounded by the crass treatment of ecological resources, and taking little comfort in the ability of government to protect them. "The Scent of Scandal" is his best book yet, fusing investigative reporting and true-crime writing to create the pace and tension of a great detective novel.

The reader wishes only for more -- that Pittman would have completed Lowman's story (she landed as director of the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh), or that he would have traveled to Peru to write more on orchid history and ecology. "The Scent of Scandal" is not that sort of book because Pittman is a devoted daily newspaper reporter. Florida is lucky to have him as an environmental watchdog. One can only imagine the crazy tale he'll sniff up next.

This is the best orchid book written yet - much better than the others. It is very fast paced - I could not put it down - and I'm buying it for my friends. The author does a great job of describing the events and how they fit together - I had heard bits and pieces but never the entire story. Congratulations on a very well written book.

Back in 1960 when I turned sixteen a couple of friends and I headed out to explore Big Cypress. Part of our purpose was to experiment with cigarettes and bourbon. For me, at least, son of a hunting guide and nephew of the first biologist ever hired by the old Florida Game and Fresh Water Fish Commission, the appeal was even more (really!)the opportunity to explore and investigate the wild places and wildlife. I craved encounters with anything that ran, flew, or -- best of all -- slithered. But one of our number was intersted in the plants, in particular orchids. And they were profuse. The little Butterfly Orchids grew in such profusion that when they bloomed they perfumed the air downwind of the cypress domes they favored. Cigar Orchids and Ghost Orchids were also common, and even more captivating. I was smitten. I still am. We were all smitten. So we stole them. Stole them shamelessly and enthusiastically for parents, teachers, and girls. And on nearby Chevalier Loop (which the locals all called "Chevrolet") a retired Navy Chief had established his own orchid jungle, with boardwalks running out over the swamp waters. He was friendly and informative with us, but he hated "garden club ladies" with a bitter passion, expressed with the force and vocabulary honed in a former life at sea, on warships, in combat. The ladies arrived, according to him, in chauferred limosines and -- stole orchids. And so I learned, first hand and young, that orchids, as James II of England said of falconry, are "a great stirrer up of passions." "A Scent of Scandal" is a recounting of one more story of these most beautiful and erotic of flowers, and of the passionate, irrational, and often illegal actions they inspire. Our merry 1960 band of hormonally overloaded high school boys, a Popeye-double Navy Chief, and larcenous rich Miami ladies was far less varied and colorful than the cast of orchid fanatics Craig Pittman follows through the episode of discovery and intrigue he reports in " Scent...". Other reviews perfectly describe in accurate detail the plot and specific subject matter of this fascinating book. For me it was a return to and reminder of that first introduction to the perilous intoxication of orchids and wonder of encountering them in the wild places they inhabit and symbolize.