Chris Thorogood

Author, artist and botanist Dr Chris Thorogood shares his passion for the bizarre in the plant world from the well-known Venus fly trap to the lesser-known parasitic devil’s guts, monkey-face orchid and a tropical tree with flowers that resemble a pair of red lips.

Thorogood introduces plants that trick, dupe, steal and kill and aims to demonstrate plant behaviour, inter-relationships between plants, their interdependence with animals and the nature of evolution. The talk is accompanied by his own oil paintings of the plants he has observed.

Thorogood is a botanist at the University of Oxford with a particular interest in the plants of the Mediterranean and parasitic plants. He is author of Field Guide to the Wild Flowers of the Western Mediterranean, shortlisted for the Garden Media Guild, and co-author of Field Guide to the Wild Flowers of the Algarve.

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