There’s a global black market in rare cacti and succulents, and Margulies spent years inside it — with collectors, growers, smugglers, customs officers, and conservation scientists across Europe, Asia, Mexico, and South Africa. Plants poached out of the ground in the Karoo and the Chihuahuan Desert end up on Instagram and in living rooms in Seoul and Prague. What makes the book unusual is that he takes the desire seriously rather than treating collectors as villains; he’s a geographer interested in what it is about these particular plants that makes people lose their judgment.
The Cactus Hunters