“Pathless Forest: The Quest to Save the World’s Largest Flowers” by Chris Thorogood

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Rating: 4/5 Stars

A fascinating travelogue by the author as he goes around Southeast Asia looking for a remarkable group of plants: genus Rafflesia.

Rafflesia is a parasitic plant that only grows inside a group of vines, drawing nourishment from its host. But when it blooms, it produces the largest flower in the world, up to a metre across, and emits a smell of decay to attract its pollinators, mainly flies. The author has been fascinated by Rafflesia since childhood, and this journey will give him the opportunity to see various species of Rafflesia in the wild.

But the journey would not be easy. The author would journey through the Philippines and Indonesia with his local guides, consulting local tribes who know the forest. This knowledge is vital, for Rafflesia only blooms for a short while, and the author is initially frustrated, finding only unopened or already decaying flowers. But eventually the searches pay off, and they get to see (and smell) Rafflesia in full bloom.

In between the journeys, the author gives various biology lessons on Rafflesia and other plants he has searched for and seen. One part looks at efforts to try to propagate Rafflesia by human means (their seeds cannot be preserved and grown) by grafting them on to new vines. So far, only one person has managed to do this and the author visits him to try to learn how to do it.

During the journey, the author also describes various other plants seen during their journeys (some plant families mentioned in the book are familiar to me). But he also laments the destruction of the forests that he sees as he goes from place to place: at one point, he describes a whole group of brown hills in the Philippines, complete denuded of forests.

But he ends the book on a hopeful note as he talks to local people dedicated to protecting their forests and, possibly, help him keep Rafflesia and other plants alive.

Book read from 2025/04/22 to 2025/04/28