A fun and intriguing book that will appeal to anyone who is instinctively drawn to the ruffians of the plant world.
There is a wealth of interest and intrigue in Weird Plants, but this isn’t a book for those looking for a comprehensive guide. It’s more of an amusebouche to an underworld of rare and extraordinary plants.
Author Chris Thorogood is a botanist at the University of Oxford. His experiences seeking out unusual plants in exotic locations around the world has inspired him to create rich, detailed oil paintings of the plants he’s seen on his travels and he has used his paintings to illustrate the plants featured in this book.
Thorogood has split Weird Plants into seven thrillingly named chapters: Vampires, Killers, Fraudsters, Jailers, Accomplices, Survivors and Hitch-hikers. Each section covers interesting facts about where in the world these unusual plants can be found, their behaviour, botany and appearance and Thorogood explains the weird and wonderful ways in which they have adapted to their, often harsh environments. He has also included a world map so the reader can see the plants provenance.
As well as infamous plants, such as the Venus flytrap ( Dionaea muscipula), and the bee orchid ( Ophrys), which Thorogood describes as ‘the ultimate floral fraudster’, there are mysterious and unknown plants included too. Two plants that stood out for me are the flying duck orchid ( Caleana major), a small decoy plant that resembles a duck in flight, and the not so lovely-sounding forest leech, Balanophora fungosa, a peculiar flowering structure that feeds from the roots of about 20 different species in the forests of Asia and Australasia.
With Christmas just around the corner, this would make a great stocking-filler for anyone fascinated by the diversity of plants.