Owen spoke of the strand and its ghost orchids with fascination, his sentences rapid and pitched high in excitement: This was a man who utterly loved his job. Though the ghost orchid\u2019s bloom is an \u201cincredible, sensual, charismatic\u201d flower in deep contrast with the swamp, Owen said it\u2019s otherwise camouflaged, near impossible to detect.<\/p>\n
During the summer months, Owen said traversing the strand in search of a ghost could mean wading through waist-deep, murky water in the middle of alligator mating season. But in the mind of a poacher, he said danger doesn\u2019t seem to matter \u2014 and Owen would know.<\/p>\n
Orlean\u2019s \u201cThe Orchid Thief\u201d detailed John Laroche\u2019s theft of numerous protected plant species from the Fakahatchee Strand, three of which were mature ghosts, Owen said. He served as the author\u2019s Fakahatchee guide, and when Laroche was required by law to return what he stole, Owen brought the ghosts back into the swamp himself.<\/p>\n
The orchids can be purchased online for around $50 to $200. It\u2019s not clear whether prices on the black market may be higher for orchids that buyers perceive to be more rare or pure.<\/p>\n
Laroche was obsessed with cloning and selling the flowers for profit and personal fulfillment. There\u2019s value in harvesting an orchid\u2019s seeds to grow more, but a mature ghost stolen from the wild wouldn\u2019t survive long, Owen said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere must be a market out there just to have a ghost orchid in bloom because they all know it\u2019s not going to live,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He witnessed others go missing during the remainder of his career, too.<\/p>\n
Even for a seasoned park biologist like Owen \u2014 who retired in 2023 \u2014 it took about three years and much trekking to get a headcount on the strand\u2019s known ghost population since 1993. The endangered species proposal lists it as about 230, but the exact number is unknown.<\/p>\n
Owen kept tabs on a ghost for almost a decade until it disappeared in 2005, the first in a string of thefts. Two more were stolen just before a tropical storm the following year. Then, another three disappeared in 2007. They were all taken during the summer rainy season, when he said park biologists wouldn\u2019t be heavily monitoring.<\/p>\n
The endangered species proposal said 10 had been pinched from the Fakahatchee by 2020, which could represent around 8% of the strand\u2019s known ghosts. A poacher was caught there as recently as two years ago, and the site remains at high risk of more attempts.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re just trying to make a buck and get it free,\u201d Owen said, his tone suddenly harsh. \u201cOnce the ghost orchid is listed federally, now it won\u2019t be taken lightly.\u201d<\/p>\n
Before the government\u2019s latest proposal, the ghost orchid was designated only as a protected species by Florida. The maximum penalty for a first-time offender was about a $500 fine and possible prison time. Under the new federal guidelines, a criminal misdemeanor under the Endangered Species Act could bring fines of $50,000 and up to one year in prison.<\/p>\n
To unnerve poachers, Owen installed trail cameras and moved them sporadically for a year. He refrained from showing park guests the strand\u2019s mature ghosts, only revealing the location of young, non-flowering plants unpalatable to poachers.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t just make it easy for people to find it,\u201d he said. \u201cWe do have to kind of keep that secret because you just never know.\u201d<\/p>\n
Though the species\u2019 life history is still under study, researchers know it\u2019s slow growing. Owen said he watched two ghosts in the wild since they were the size of \u201ca parentheses on a printed page,\u201d and it took both upwards of 15 years to reach adulthood.<\/p>\n
Since the ghost is so long-lived, only the older plants are capable of reproducing to save the species. They\u2019re also the most attractive to poachers looking to nab something pretty.<\/p>\n
The ghost in decline<\/p>\n
Adam Herdman, a University of Florida environmental horticulture doctoral candidate, has also seen first hand just how much time the species needs to grow.<\/p>\n
With six months\u2019 worth of state and federal permits in hand, Herdman said he ventures into protected areas like the Florida Panther National Wildlife Refuge, also in southwest Florida, every few months to collect data and, in special cases, ghost orchid seeds.<\/p>\n
The researchers usually park off the side of a stretch of Interstate 75 known as Alligator Alley and walk down an abandoned logging tram platform. From there, they\u2019re at the mercy of the swamp. Herdman recounted the looming threat of territorial alligators and lightning strikes, which he said made him scramble up a tree and \u201chang out with the orchids\u201d more than once.<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/tfl-z-ghost-orchid-1031-02.jpg\")
A baby ghost orchid spends its early life in a Petri dish in Adam Herdman’s lab at the University of Florida on Friday, Sept. 5, 2025. (Rylan DiGiacomo-Rapp\/Fresh Take Florida)<\/p>\n
Herdman can then safely return to his UF lab, where thousands of dust-like seeds are given a chance to germinate in petri dishes. His most recent study concerns pinpointing their ideal temperature window.<\/p>\n
He said the viability of those seeds is consistently low.<\/p>\n
The ghost is picky. It relies on specific fungi and host trees \u2014 typically pond apple, pop ash and cypress \u2014 to germinate. Additional factors like constant humidity and the survival of its one pollinator, the sphinx moth, is key to maturity. In the wild, only half the ghost population is old enough to reproduce. Less than half of that is capable of releasing seeds each year, Herdman said.<\/p>\n
Since beginning his study of natural ghost populations in 2015, Herdman said most of his research centers on reintroducing seeds into the wild. He most recently brought young orchids back to the swamp around 2018, and as more baby ghosts germinate in his lab, he said another reintroduction could be possible within a couple years.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople should be able to go out and look at these beautiful plants with their own eyes, but before we can trust them as practitioners and scientists, we need to know what\u2019s there,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The ghost is more than just aesthetically pleasing. Its sensitivity to external conditions \u2014 everything from its partner fungi and host trees to its sphinx moth pollinators and wetland water flow \u2014 make it similar to a canary in a coal mine, Herdman said.<\/p>\n
If something is wrong in the swamp, the ghost is the first to go.<\/p>\n
A global curiosity<\/p>\n
Boardwalk paths weave through Audubon\u2019s Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary, southeast of Fort Myers and home of a \u201csuper\u201d ghost orchid tucked high in the canopy of a bald cypress tree. Shawn Clem, the sanctuary\u2019s director of conservation, trekked a mile into the wilderness and stopped short, pointing into the distance.<\/p>\n
Without a flower, the plant was nearly impossible to spot at first, even through the zoom lens of a camera. Leafless roots spidered from a central cluster clinging to the bald cypress\u2019 trunk, about 50 feet above the swamp\u2019s still water.<\/p>\n
Because the \u201csuper\u201d ghost is so large, researchers like Clem are unsure whether it\u2019s one or a group of multiple orchids. She said it\u2019s likely the only known ghost documented so high in the canopy. It\u2019s also attached to an old growth tree, another abnormality.<\/p>\n
The Everglades was extensively logged during the 19th and 20th centuries, but Corkscrew trees managed to evade the axe. The \u201csuper\u201d ghost\u2019s bald cypress could be upward of 500 years old, Clem said, a window into the orchid\u2019s natural habitat and behavior before human interference.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not the only known ghost orchid that we have here at the sanctuary,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s the only one whose location we reveal.\u201d<\/p>\n
The endangered species proposal said Corkscrew is home to two ghosts, but Clem said that\u2019s probably an underestimate considering how difficult they are to detect. Like the \u201csuper\u201d ghost, it\u2019s possible more could be hiding unexpectedly high in the canopy of old growth trees.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow old the plant is, we don\u2019t know,\u201d she said. Researchers think it could have been alive for more than four or five decades now. Since its discovery in 2007, the \u201csuper\u201d ghost has managed to bloom at least once during every month of the year, drawing fascination from visitors.<\/p>\n
About an hour south, Naples Botanical Garden Director of Collections Nicholas Ewy was preparing much smaller specimens for display. Like Herdman, he labors to grow ghosts from seeds collected in the wild.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s about some of the most advanced propagation you can do,\u201d he said. The whole process has to take place under sterile conditions.<\/p>\n
In his lab, Ewy suspends the seeds in a nutrient solution. If even the smallest amount of bacteria, yeast or fungi invades a flask, the whole batch is ruined. There are hundreds in each, so he only needs a couple successes to produce more than enough plants for the garden.<\/p>\n
The orchid propagation room was saturated with pink light, and petri dishes held the seedlings recently moved from flasks, which appeared merged into green and brown clumps. Once the young plants form roots, they\u2019re transferred to their own plastic cup to mature. The older ghosts were tucked into a corner, each a funnel-cake-like jumble of limbs.<\/p>\n
The plants will eventually be nestled into burlap or strapped to wood planks in a greenhouse. One day, Ewy said they could even be zip tied to a cypress or pop ash tree around the garden\u2019s ghost orchid boardwalk.<\/p>\n
The Naples Botanical Garden has acquired some orchids with vaguer origins from plant shows, which he calls their \u201ccuriosity plants.\u201d They live in the greenhouses behind the scenes and are occasionally shown to people<\/a> when they bloom, but Ewy said those individuals would never be used for repopulation projects outside the garden, especially not for ghosts.<\/p>\n \u201cYou have no idea where it came from, if it\u2019s a hybrid, how it was collected, if there\u2019s any permits or anything,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The rules are even stricter when it comes to crossing international borders. Ewy has helped transport plants, including ghost orchids, to the Chelsea Flower Show in London, England.<\/p>\n In 2023, he ensured a ghost on the cusp of blooming reached the show. He said reporters and camera crews were anxious for it to flower as he warmed it with heat packs during the chilly London summer.<\/p>\n Lawrence Zettler, an Illinois College biology professor and Chicago Botanic Garden research associate, worked beside Ewy in London.<\/p>\n Zettler, a pioneer of an orchid research pipeline, recalled the public\u2019s awe after their ghost finally bloomed two days after the flower show \u2014 and the social media uproar that followed. While the species awaits a decision on its endangered species status in the United States, he said its image also endures across the globe.<\/p>\n \u201cThe whole world is watching about the ghost orchid,\u201d Zettler said.<\/p>\n ___<\/p>\n