It didn’t start as a hobby. It began as obsession. In the early 1800s, long before orchids were sold in supermarkets or lined windowsills in quiet apartments, they were rare enough to spark competition, secrecy, and sometimes a kind of madness. Explorers sailed across oceans, hacked through jungles, bribed guides, risked disease, and occasionally lost their lives — all for the chance to bring back a single unknown orchid species. That era came to be known, quite fittingly, as Orchid Mania.