Dr Chris Thorogood is a man who looks very closely at things. This is apparent in his extraordinary botanical art, of which the hyperreal detail is breath-taking. But spend a little time in his company and you realise that this intense looking runs like a philosophical seam through all that he does. “I’d like us to move away from just seeing plants as a green backdrop, and move towards a place where we appreciate them for their own sake, not something to use or wipe out, but to care deeply for,” he says.
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As a child he was drawn to “all kinds of living things, particularly ugly ones”. All his life he has kept pet common toads in his garden. “They all have distinct personalities,” he says; an explanation you feel he’s had to utter many times. Pet toads led to squirting cucumbers, arum lilies and other strange and sometimes deadly plants. “I might have been a bit of a nightmare child,” he admits. By the time he was old enough for a weekend job, he was feeding sharks and falling for sea anemones at an aquarium in Southend. “I’m not really fond of fluffy things,” he says.
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From his time at the aquarium, he knew he wanted to study the living world and, as plants were his main love, he went to the University of Bristol to study botany. He stayed on to do his PhD researching the evolutionary path of broomrapes, Orobanche spp, and later did a post doc in what he calls “heavy duty molecular genetics”, which though he liked, he admits was a bit of slog. This period of looking carefully and closely at speciation, of how and why life chooses to drift and change the way it does, played into his own philosophy on life. “It is sublime to think about long, broad time,” he says. “We like being historians and we like certain eras, but we find the future baffling, and I think that evolution can be a catalyst for examining our relationship with time.”
He helped develop a denture chew for cats, and later made soft drinks for Britvic
But the real world was calling. “I needed to look for a job that paid after all that time studying,” he says. He took a side step from plants and got a job in research and development in chemical engineering for confectionery manufacturer Mars, where he helped develop a denture chew for cats, and later made soft drinks for Britvic. Meanwhile, on his days off, he wrote field guides and taught field botany in Portugal (all those Araceae) on his holidays until his perfect job came up at Oxford University in 2016, as head of science and public engagement for the Oxford Botanic Garden.
Here his passion for plants, for details, for collaboration and for adventure have collided into his dream role. “None of us have all that long on this world,” he says. “I am very lucky to have the job I do, getting to spend time doing something I care deeply about.” Finally getting to align his scientific skillset to his passion means he takes the role very seriously. “We are the oldest botanic garden in the UK, and I am more and more aware of the echo of time here – we have trees that are as old as the garden, and you think about what they’ve seen. But increasingly I think about its uncertain future. The garden now floods at least twice a year, and is affected by both storms and drought. So, there’s an urgency to our work now. We need climate-resilient planting, not because it’s a virtuous idea, but because we actively have to.”
I’ve just got a good head for heights and don’t mind climbing over the edge of a cliff to spend a moment with a plant with all that mist below.
One of the things he loves most about his job is that he gets to work across disciplines. His work has taken him to wild, isolated places dense with biodiversity, but also cliff edges and raging rivers. “I’m no Bear Grylls by any means; I don’t like to take great risks. I’ve just got a good head for heights and don’t mind climbing over the edge of a cliff to spend a moment with a plant with all that mist below. It’s in those moments that I feel truly alive.”
Chris’s plant memories are “diamond sharp” and he often captures this clarity in his art. “Being with these plants, in that moment, that’s what’s magical to me. I feel the need to make sense of that time in
a meditative way, and painting is a way of fixing that energy,” he says.
When he’s not painting, he’s often writing and has an impressive array of books to his name, on everything from globe-trotting plant travelogues to children’s books, and plant monographs on the Nepenthes of Malaysia and Orobanche of Europe, many of which feature in his art. “If I can help people care more about the natural world, whether that’s by helping to promote the work of the people who work tirelessly to protect their rainforest in Sumatra, or something closer to home, and give these things agency and momentum, this might stop us from sleepwalking into losing what’s so precious.” For Chris, this means plants and people, sharing our world together.
Useful information Oxford Botanic Garden, Rose Lane, Oxford OX1 4AZ. Tel 01865 610300, obga.ox.ac.uk
Chris’s book, Pathless Forest: The Quest to Save the World’s Largest Flowers (Penguin, £12.99) is out now
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