The Orchid Thief

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The Orchid Thief is a non-fiction book by American journalist and author Susan Orlean, based on her investigation of the 1994 arrest of John Laroche and a group of Seminoles in south Florida for poaching rare orchids in the Fakahatchee Strand State Preserve. The book is based on an earlier article that Orlean wrote for The New Yorker magazine. Laroche, a plant dealer, was determined to find and clone the rare Ghost Orchid for profit.

The book, Orlean, and Laroche were later used as the subjects of the highly fictionalized and self-referential film, Adaptation. (2002).