ORCHIDAE NIGRA

Contributed by: The James Bond Movie Encyclopedia by Steven Jay Rubin

The scientific name for the black orchid, the fictional, highly toxic jungle plant from which billionaire industrialist and madman Hugo Drax (Michael Lonsdale) has developed a nerve gas that could destroy all human, but not animal, life on Earth in Moonraker. According to Q (Desmond Llewelyn), who briefs Bond at a Brazilian jungle village, the orchid was thought to have been extinct but was brought back from Brazil’s Tapirapé River by a missionary. Archaeological reports indicate that long-term exposure to the orchid’s pollen caused sterility in the race of people who built the ancient city in the Amazon that is now Drax’s space shuttle launch site.

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