Photos courtesy of the Santa Barbara International Orchid Show Paphiopedilum Krull's Emerald Meadows is another type of slipper orchid.

Organizers of the 63rd annual Santa Barbara International Orchid Show weren't kidding around when they picked "Orchid Fever!" as their theme.

Living up to the event's exclamation point will be appearances by three experts with books to sign and stories to tell — stories that should destroy forever the image of orchid aficionados as fuddy-duddy pillars of society.

Speaking Saturday and Sunday will be Eric Hansen, who has spent more than 20 years documenting the fringe elements of the orchid world for National Geographic and Outside magazines and for books such as his 2001 travelogue, "Orchid Fever: A Horticultural Tale of Love, Lust and Lunacy." Hansen's cast of nonfiction characters includes a collector who did jail time for orchid smuggling and a Santa Barbara grower who carries a gun while tending his plants, just in case.

Appearing Friday through Sunday will be grower-collector Lance Birk, whose "The Last Orchid Hunter" details his successful search for the exceedingly rare Laelia orchid in Brazil. (Successful, that is, until it was stolen from him by another plant hunter.)

The exploits of former UC Irvine ecology professor Harold Koopowitz may sound a tad scholarly in comparison. But Koopowitz, an expert on the effects of deforestation on wild orchids, will be on hand Friday to talk about a particularly sensual (if you're into that sort of thing) species: the paphiopedilum, or slipper orchid.

Named for its resemblance to a lady's shoe, the bulbous-lipped flower is the subject of Koopowitz's newly published "Tropical Slipper Orchids: Paphiopedilum and Phragmipedium Species and Hybrids."

But you don't need to listen to, much less read, a word about orchids in order to enjoy them.

For that, look no further than the show's weekend-long display of hundreds of orchid species, coaxed into bloom by more than 70 exhibitors from around the world. Four off-site orchid nurseries in Carpinteria and Santa Barbara also will be open for self-guided tours in conjunction with the show.

New to the event this year is an exhibit devoted to orchid-themed art. The works may be still lifes, but the collection promises to be anything but static. In addition to oil paintings by Santa Barbara artist Ralph Waterhouse, the exhibit will include photographs by the late Robert Mapplethorpe.

Mapplethorpe's work inspired a firestorm of exclamation points in 1989, when it was discovered that the National Endowment for the Arts had funded a show of some of his — ahem! — more erotic works. At the Santa Barbara orchid show, however, you're less likely to see a bullwhip than a barkeria in bloom.