CHASING PLANTS: JOURNEYS WITH A BOTANIST THROUGH RAINFORESTS, SWAMPS AND MOUNTAINS
Kew Publishing, £25 ISBN 978-1842467640
An engaging tale of adventures in pursuit of rare and unusual plants in faraway places, complemented by beautiful images.
Reviewer Matthew Biggs is a plant expert and garden writer.
Dr Chris Thorogood, the deputy director and head of science at the University of Oxford Botanic Garden and Arboretum is a talented artist, scientist and storyteller. And his raison d'être is plants.
From the early pages, it is obvious that this self-confessed plant addict gets his kicks from seeking out the weird, rare and unusual around the globe, (particularly parasitic or carnivorous), regardless of location or risk.
These expanded jottings from his diaries tell of botanical surveys, scientific research or conservation projects on behalf of the University; others are simply for the thrill of the chase.
Each section is divided into geographical regions, then bite-sized stories, avoiding any possibility of botanical indigestion, and is punctuated by evocative quotes from eminent botanists and travellers who have traversed that path before.
His ‘back story’ starts in an unlikely location: a car park by an IKEA in Essex. It hops over to the docklands in South Wales but before long he is scouring the desert in South Africa for ‘the strangest plant in the world’, swooning over irises in the Holy Land, free climbing perilous cliffs in the Canary Islands and plunging into mosquito-infested swamps in Japan in search of elusive botanical treasures.
It is
