Boston Flora

Tag: Chris Thorogood

  • Thursday, April 27, 12:00 noon – 1:15 pm Eastern – Chasing Plants, Online

    Join Chris Thorogood, deputy director and head of science at the University of Oxford Botanic Garden and Arboretum, for a glimpse into the exhilarating adventures of a field botanist. The Smithsonian Associates Program on April 27 at noon Eastern time is presented on Zoom, live from the UK.

    In his adventures across Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, Thorogood has clambered over cliffs and up erupting volcanoes and trekked through typhoons. Along the way, he’s encountered pitcher plants, irises, and orchids of unimaginable beauty. Thorogood brings his travels to life with his vivid paintings, shares details of hair-raising excursions, and explains the vital work he and other botanists are doing to protect the world’s plants.

    The lecture is $20 for Smithsonian members, $25 for nonmembers. Thorogood’s book Chasing Plants: Journeys with a Botanist Through Rainforests, Swamps and Mountains (University of Chicago Press) is available for purchase through the registration link.

  • Thursday, November 12, 6:30 pm – 7:30 pm – Weird Plants

    Enjoy a virtual lecture and Q&A session on November 23 at 5:30 with author Dr. Chris Thorogood about his new book, Weird Plants. In this little book of horrors, Chris Thorogood reveals the weird, the wonky, and the sinister specimens he has encountered during his travels in the wide world of plants. Far from passively absorbing the sun’s rays, these plants kill, steal and kidnap, making them dynamic participants in the ecosystems around them. From orchids that duplicitously look, feel and even smell like a female insect to bamboozle sex-crazed male bees, to giant pitcher plants that have evolved toilets for tree shrews to carnivorous plants that drug, drown, and consume unsuspecting insect prey, Weird Plants takes us deep inside the worlds of plants whose imaginative and calculating survival methods are startlingly reminiscent of human schemes.

    Dr. Chris Thorogood is the Deputy Director and Head of Science of the University of Oxford Botanic Garden and Arboretum in the UK, and a lecturer in biology at the University of Oxford’s Department of Plant Sciences.

    Chris’s research focuses on the evolution of ‘weird plants’ – parasites and carnivores, as well as their conservation. He also works on plant diversity in the Mediterranean Basin and Japan, and the uses of plants in technology (biomimetics).

    Chris is an ambassador for public engagement with plant sciences, and makes regular television appearances, He is also an international best-selling author of specialist and non-specialist titles including three specialist field guides to the wild flowers of the Mediterranean published by Kew (the Algarve, the western Mediterranean and eastern Mediterranean), popular title ‘Weird Plants’ (which has a focus on parasitic plants) and the children’s book Perfectly Peculiar Plants.

    The Zoom author book talk is sponsored by Tower Hill Botanic Garden, $10 for Tower Hill members, $15 for nonmembers. Register at www.towerhillbg.org.