Plants can make people do funny things – and I’m not talking about cannabis or opium poppies. If you’ve read Susan Orlean’s book “The Orchid Thief,” upon which the movie “Adaptation” is loosely based, then you understand the risks some people will take to acquire the plants they love.

There are poachers who nab lady slippers from the forests or tree orchids from the Everglades. There are collectors who cultivate dozens of different varieties of, say, hens and chicks. And then there are the singly obsessed – these are the types who get all in a twist over the short-lived but spectacular show put on by a night-blooming cereus.

As a gardener who seeks out all things unusual and rare, my weakness is the mercurial Himalayan blue poppy. It is one of the few true blue flowers in nature, and in the plant world, it has a reputation as a bit of a Goldilocks – things need to be just right for it to succeed.

After reading an article on blue poppies in Fine Gardening magazine that listed Evermay Nursery in Old Town as a source, I hit the pavement on my own Orchid Thief-esque quest. Instead of the Florida swamp, my search took me three-quarters of the way around Pushaw Lake, to a cottage that was most definitely not a nursery. So I went home and called. And I sent e-mail. And I Googled, only to find that the proprietor, Richard May, had been featured on Martha Stewart Living television.

Something told me I was into something good.

When I heard back from May, I found a kindred spirit, albeit one who knows a heck of a lot more about plants than I do. The reason he keeps the location of his Bangor-area nursery a mystery is because it’s tiny, the availability of plants is limited and he has a few very valuable plants – types that attract the orchid thieves of lore. But he invited me out anyway – I may be a plant freak, but I’m no thief.

As we wandered the grounds, May explained that he grows about 500 types of perennials, including a substantial collection of vibrant primroses and many Alpine varieties that are ideal for rock gardens. He has a rare Japanese dicentra (bleeding heart) and a host of gentians. He grows cowslip from England and yellow slipper orchids.

These aren’t the types of plants you see in the nursery section of Wal-Mart or the Home Depot. In fact, these aren’t the types of plants you usually see anywhere, though Everlasting Farm in Bangor does carry a selection of his offerings.

“Some of these are very hard to grow, and for some reason, I decided to grow things that are difficult to grow,” May said. “They’re not commonly available, and they fill a niche market.”

It’s a painstaking process that requires much patience. On a tour of the nursery, he pointed to a year-old slipper orchid that was only an inch tall. He gets the yellow lady slippers as “little tiny babies” from a grower in Minnesota. Primrose seed comes from Germany. For one variety of dicentra, seeds become available once every few years, and even then, he can get only 10 at a time for $5. Even if he does everything right, he still loses 10 percent of his stock each year.

Though the demand for many of his offerings is limited, it’s fervent, and the few people who want his plants are willing to go to great lengths to seek him out. He has a waiting list for many of the perennials he grows.

“Some of these are never going to be that available,” he said. “Everyone wants marigolds in six-packs. Nobody wants this little thing that is beautiful in its own right.”

Well, some people do. The majority of his business is conducted online, and he has regular clients from as far away as Colorado. Locally, he supplies rock-garden plants to Orono landscape designer Claire Ackroyd, who is also his business partner in a nearby nursery that grows unusual annuals and vegetables.

“Some people like to grow unusual things,” May explained.

And as it turns out, many of those unusual things thrive in Maine. It doesn’t hurt that May has a green thumb – he grew up on a nursery in California, and he earned money making plant cuttings as a boy. He’s always loved to hike, which sparked his interest in Alpine plants.

“I like the aesthetic of this little tiny plant in a really hostile environment with a huge, beautiful flower on it,” he said.

Though he had long dreamed of running his own nursery, May didn’t take the plunge until he came to a crossroads in his career. He had been living in Vermont at the time, married a faculty member at the University of Maine and moved to Old Town. Evermay nursery has existed in its current incarnation for the last 12 years.

Though many of his regular clients seek him out through the Internet, he tries to make the sale more personal by carefully packaging the plants and including a handwritten note.

“There’s kind of a community of people who are interested in plants like this – kind of the lunatic fringe,” he said, smiling. “I really like that when someone gets into a plant that way. It helps people to get through the year, and it provides a nice touchstone to natural life.”

Because his business is specialized and the plants are finicky, balancing supply and demand is tricky. He may only have 10 or 15 of a certain plant some years. Jack-in-the-pulpits are slow to grow, but everyone wants them. If you transplant native plants at the wrong time, they rot.

“Every plant has a growth cycle,” he said. “You have to respect that.”

Alpine plants, which thrive in rocky terrain, pose another challenge. May doesn’t want people to kill the plants he sells them, but he also doesn’t have time in the summer to give a crash-course on the subject. For beginners, he recommends the book “Rock Gardening” by Linc Foster. He also has a comprehensive list of tips on his Web site.

As for my dream plant? The blue poppy – or mecanopsis for all you purists – tolerates a cold winter. Our summers aren’t too hot, and it likes that. It craves light in spring, shade after that, and a lot of fertilizer early and late in the season. In his catalog, May describes it as “difficult.”

Even in the best conditions, it lives only three or four years.

It’s enough to drive even a plant freak crazy.

Evermay Nursery is open by appointment. For more information, visit www.evermaynursery.com or call 827-0522 or 991-4467. May and Ackroyd sell a selection of unusual annuals Saturdays at the Orono Farmers Market and at Parks Hardware in Orono. Everlasting Farm in Bangor carries a selection of Evermay’s rock-garden perennials.