 The Cattleya Orchid | It might seem extreme to place a flower under 24-hour police protection but at the annual orchid festival in Kew Gardens, 12 constables and two sergeants will keep guard while surveillance cameras are filming every move. In the world of plants, nothing arouses passions like an orchid. Collectors beg, steal and risk their lives in jungles to obtain the latest discovered bloom in what is a multi-billion a year business. |  |
 |  Very rare Black Orchid-Cymbidium Kiwi |  Cloud Forest Orchid |
 Singing Orchid |  |  The spider orchid is found only at the Swanage Sewage Treatment Works in Dorset. |
 |  Potinara Orchid |  Cymbidium Orchid |
 | According to detectives it was a professional job and the thieves, who left no trace, knew exactly what they were after. Bearing all the hallmarks of an audacious gem heist this was the scene at Kew Gardens in 2014 where a rare African water lily was snatched. It is thought to have been sold to an unscrupulous private collector on the growing black market for stolen plants. |  |
 | 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 limited but thriving black market involving fanatical but unscrupulous private collectors. If someone wants a species badly enough they will pay vast amounts of money to get it. |  Monkeyface orchid |
 Hochstetter Butterfly Orchid | Rare and new discoveries of wild plants are the most prized, sending collectors into a frenzy. It’s feared that some species are being driven to the brink of extinction by over-harvesting. One of the world’s rarest orchids was re-discovered in 2014 by British botanists on a volcanic island in the Atlantic. There were only 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 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 of 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, often killed each other in pursuit of the newest breeds. |  |
 | 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. |  |
