THE WILD ORCHID MAN REVIEWS

The orchids are wild; the hunter is civilized
By GEORGE MEYER Correspondent

Published HeraldTribune.com, Sarasota Florida: Thursday, June 11, 2009 at 1:00 a.m.

Filmmaker Darryl Saffer has given his pleasant little nature series the snappy title of "Wild Orchid Man."While the series features an awful lot about orchids in the wild, there's much to suggest that the man talking about those gorgeous flowers is anything but wild. He is Stig Dalström, the soft-spoken orchid expert at Selby Gardens. And his role in Saffer's exploration of orchids, their habitat and their survival doesn't need any hype.

In fact, you'll enjoy this one-hour debut episode a lot more if you come primed to learn a bit about nature, most of it close to home. Saffer plunks Dalström in the Fakahatchee Strand nature preserve portion of theEverglades, the mother lode of orchids and tropical flora and fauna of all types in the United States. With help from the cheerful park ranger Mike Owen, Dalström hikes through the swamp, pointing out this and that. The self-described "plant nerds" stop at just about anything that catches their eyes, meticulously explaining what they've found. Their penchant for carefully labeling the genus and species gets tiresome in a hurry, but their sharp eye for other detail enriches the lush photography.

Along the way, Owen and Dalström can't help but explain their own feelings about the swamp and its secrets. Instead of distracting, such information broadens the experience. Director-editor Saffer doesn't search out much you couldn't already find on the Discovery Channel. But he doesn't mind lingering over details, offering loving shots aimed at exposing often tiny flowers for our examination.

Ostensibly, Dalström, who apparently speaks extemporaneously, is taking us on a search for his first view of a "ghost orchid" in the wild. But his discovery of the flower turns out to be anything but a climax, and the ghost orchid itself, while rare, is anything but impossible to locate, according to Owen.

No matter. The appeal of the episode is its affection for the swamp and its natural beauty, which sometimes appears like a color version of a Clyde Butcher photograph. The trek, which also stretches into the Corkscrew Swamp, would make a nice addition to a nature's classroom lecture. And if you like richly rendered color pictures of orchids where they live instead of in corsages, "Wild Orchid Man" offers an engrossing excursion.

Their hunt in later episodes will take them from the jungles of South America to the base of the Himalayas, often combing dense, hostile terrain to catch sight of one of these exquisite, natural masterpiece.