Orchids good as gold

According to cops it was a professional job and the thieves knew exactly what they were after. Bearing all the marks of an art gallery heist, this was the scene at Kew Gardens in 2014 where a rare African water lily was snatched. Its thought to have been sold to an unscrupulous private collector.

The legal plant trade amounts to £9 billion a year worldwide. There is a kudos in owning anything rare. Although it’s impossible to give precise figures for plants, there is a thriving black market involving private collectors. If someone wants a species badly enough they will pay vast amounts of money for it. Rare and new discoveries of wild plants are the most prized.

Monkeyface orchid

Hochstetter Butterfly Orchid

Some orchids species are being driven to extinction. One of the world’s rarest orchids was re-discovered in 2014 by botanists on a volcanic island in the Atlantic. There were 250 plants of the unique species on the island of Sao Jorge in the Portuguese Azores, making it the rarest in Europe.

Bee Orchid

Lady's Slipper orchids

The albino form of the Vanda sanderiana or the Waling-waling is a rare and prized plant for orchid collectors and breeders.

Bulbophyllum kubahense

Phragmipedium kovachii was first found in 2001 and is referred to as one of the most important natural history discoveries in the last decade.

Cypripedium calceolus. It receives round-the-clock police surveillance where it grows on a Lancashire golf course.

Paphiopedilum rothschildianum, an orchid that is on top of the endangered species list.

The contemporary orchid-breeding business in Taiwan and its main rival, the Netherlands, centers on the Phalaenopsis, or the moth orchid. In Victorian Europe, orchid hunters, hired by wealthy collectors, sometimes killed each other in pursuit of new breeds.

Bornean slipper orchid

Shenzhen Nongke orchid took eight years to develop and in 2005, it was sold for about $200k.

A new species of orchid found in Colombia has been named Telipogon diabolicus, because the heart of the flower has an eerie resemblance to a devil's head. There aren't many flowers of this kind in existence. Researchers found a small patch of about 30 orchids between the borders of two Colombian departments. So far, this is its only known habitat.