Life in the Forests of the Far East

"To answer this, first I must tell you about a mountain. Mount Kinabalu in Malaysian Borneo, is truly a botanical wonderland. It’s the largest in the Malay Archipelago, and has jagged black pinnacles like a great stegosaurus jutting out of the cloud. As a child I’d stare at photographs of this mountain in books and dream about climbing it. It drew me like a magnet. Kinabalu is known for its diversity of orchids and pitcher plants and it’s long been a place of pilgrimage for botanists. The first documented ascent of Kinabalu was made by a botanist called Sir Hugh Low in 1851 – one of an adventurous group of nineteenth century plant collectors. Spenser St. John was the Consul General of Brunei who joined these botanists’ adventures and he recorded lively descriptions of them in his book Life in the Forests of the Far East . Reading it, you really get a sense of their excitement upon seeing plants that, then, were unknown to science. I was inspired by these accounts I read long before I planned my own ascents of Mount Kinabalu in my early twenties. Years later, I still find myself dipping in and out of this book. My work takes me all over the world in pursuit of plants: I’ve been over the edge of cliffs and down into the very depths of the rainforest and followed indigenous communities to find them. That’s the wonderful thing about botany – it’s a passport to places no one else can go. And it’s hard to understate the importance of plant science. From increasing food security in a changing climate, to protecting vulnerable ecosystems: plants are key to the solutions to some of the world’s most urgent challenges. There has never been a more important time to study botany."