TALES FROM THE BUSH
Pitcher perfect
A childhood dream came true on a botanist’s quest into tropical forests
“AS A CHILD I WAS OBSESSED WITH plants. I conjured up a cloud forest in a fish tank, and grew my favourites: Nepenthes – a genus of carnivorous plants from South-East Asia. I would inhale gulpfuls of its mossy air, close my eyes, and dream I was on Mount Kinabalu in Borneo – Nepenthes capital of the world, and home to the largest of them all: the king pitcher plant (Nepenthes rajah).
That dream came true when I was 21 and made my pilgrimage. At the start of the trail I was fidgety, like an athlete before a race. I met my guide and we set off over the eastern shoulder of the mountain along a trail now closed to the public. But for our footsteps and a babbling stream, the mossmuffled forest was silent.
The ascent was tough and my limbs hurt; although I was young and fit, I’d not climbed like that before. But I couldn’t give up – and every footstep was feeding my growing addiction to plants. I found a small Nepenthes festooning the trees along the track: chalices of N. tentaculata smiling at me from the moss. You know that feeling you get when you drive over a speed bump – like you’ve left your stomach behind? That’s what I felt then. It was just the warm up.
At 2,700m, we joined the summit trail with a stream of climbers wearily making their ascent. Around 20,000 people haul themselves up to the summit of Kinabalu every year to see the sunrise. You can see why: honeyed light pouring over the land 4,000m below – it’s mesmerising.
But my prize wasn’t the views at the top. It was in a mossy forest on the descent: a king pitcher plant on its rocky throne. That afternoon I entered a glade of them, tumbling out of the reeds, hanging from branches, and draped over the moss. I found an impossibly large one, its pitcher the size of a bucket. It was burgundy, velvety as a peach, and had a yawning green mouth. To find a work of nature like this was like nothing I’d felt before. I stared, love-struck.
I’ve never forgotten it. Sitting with the plants on that misty mountainside in Borneo was an experience not of this world. And it was to be my destiny. Something stirred inside me that day: I saw then with absolute clarity that I would dedicate my life to chasing plants.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chris Thorogood is author of Chasing Plants – Journeys with a Botanist through Rainforests, Swamps and Mountains (Kew Publishing, £25) and deputy director at Oxford Botanic Garden.
Have a wild tale to tell? Email a brief synopsis to catherine.smalley@ourmedia.co.uk