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    Deceptive Beauties: The World of Wild Orchids
    Deceptive Beauties: The World of Wild Orchids
    Deceptive Beauties: The World of Wild Orchids
    Ebook177 pages1 hour

    Deceptive Beauties: The World of Wild Orchids

    By Christian Ziegler, Michael Pollan and Natalie Angier

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    About this ebook

    Confucius called them the “king of fragrant plants,” and John Ruskin condemned them as “prurient apparitions.” Across the centuries, orchids have captivated us with their elaborate exoticism, their powerful perfumes, and their sublime seductiveness.
    But the disquieting beauty of orchids is an unplanned marvel of evolution, and the story of orchids is as captivating as any novel. As acclaimed writer Michael Pollan and National Geographic photographer Christian Ziegler spin tales of orchid conquest in Deceptive Beauties: The World of Wild Orchids, we learn how these flowers can survive and thrive in the harshest of environments, from tropical cloud forests to the Arctic, from semi-deserts to rocky mountainsides; how their shapes, colors, and scents are, as Darwin put it, “beautiful contrivances” meant to dupe pollinating male insects in the strangest ways. What other flowers, after all, can mimic the pheromones and even appearance of female insects, so much so that some male bees prefer sex with the orchids over sex with their own kind?
                And insects aren’t the only ones to fall for the orchids’ charms. Since the “orchidelirium” of the Victorian era, humans have braved the wilds to search them out and devoted copious amounts of time and money propagating and hybridizing, nurturing and simply gazing at them. This astonishing book features over 150 unprecedented color photographs taken by Christian Ziegler himself as he trekked through wilderness on five continents to capture the diversity and magnificence of orchids in their natural habitats. His intimate and astonishing images allow us to appreciate up close nature’s most intoxicating and deceptive beauties.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherUniversity of Chicago Press
    Release dateSep 2, 2011
    ISBN9780226098630
    Deceptive Beauties: The World of Wild Orchids
    Author

    Christian Ziegler

    Christian Ziegler (www.christianziegler.photography) is a German photojournalist specializing in natural history and science, with a focus on tropical ecosystems. Ziegler currently works for the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Konstanz, Germany, and is a regular contributor to National Geographic. His work has been awarded numerous prizes in the competitions for Wildlife Photographer of the Year, European Wildlife Photographer of the Year, and the North American Nature Photography Association. A tropical ecologist by training, Ziegler has been associated with STRI for over twenty-five years since he started his own graduate research on Barro Colorado Island. He has since worked in tropical rainforests on four continents. Ziegler’s aim is to highlight species and ecosystems under threat and to share their beauty and importance with the world. Ziegler splits his time between his homes on the edge of a rainforest national park in central Panama and in southern Germany, from where he starts his adventures around the world.

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