Botanist’s rare plant collection is ruined by vomiting flatmate
THE travails of scientific research are many and varied, from experiments that go disastrously wrong to erroneous calculations and sudden cuts in government funding.
But surely few scientists have had to cope with a major part of their work being destroyed by a vomiting flatmate.
That was the sight that greeted Joshua Styles last week when he woke at his home in Ormskirk, Lancs, to find his collection of hundreds of plants and thousands of seeds from more than 40 rare species had been severely damaged after his flatmate was sick over them and poured bleach over the rest.
The vandalism was apparently in retaliation for Mr Styles asking his flatmate, a student at nearby Edge Hill University, to make less noise in the early hours and pay his share of the bills.
Mr Styles, 22, told The Daily Telegraph: “My flatmate came home drunk at 3.30 in the morning with five girls making loads of noise. I’d had a bit of conflict with him already over not paying the bills, including the internet, so this time I cut off access to it. The next morning I woke up to find he had vomited over the plants I’ve collected for a project I set up in order to save them from regional extinction and poured bleach over them. I can’t tell you how upsetting it’s been.”
Since setting up his project in autumn last year, the botanist had painstakingly amassed his collection of rare plants indigenous to north-west England with the aim of reintroducing the vulnerable plants back into protected sites in the wild.
Since writing on social media about his flatmate’s vandalism, supporters have launched a crowdfunding page to help raise £5,000 to repair the damage.
Mr Styles said he had been overwhelmed. “These past few days have just turned everything around … absolutely lost for words with the level of support,” he said.