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Pathless Forest: The Quest to Save the World’s Largest Flowers
The incredible story of one man's obsession to find and protect the world's largest flowers
As a child, Chris Thorogood dreamed of seeing Rafflesia - the plant with the world's largest flowers. He crafted life-size replicas in an abandoned cemetery, carefully bringing them to life with paper and paint. Today he is a botanist at the University of Oxford's Botanic Garden and has dedicated his life to studying the biology of such extraordinary plants, working alongside botanists and foresters in Southeast Asia to document these huge, mysterious blooms.
Pathless Forest is the story of his journey to study and protect this remarkable plant - a biological enigma, still little understood, which invades vines as a leafless parasite and steals its food from them. We join him on a mind-bending adventure, as he faces a seemingly impenetrable barrier of weird, wonderful and sometimes fearsome flora; finds himself smacking off leeches, hanging off vines, wading through rivers; and following indigenous tribes into remote, untrodden rainforests in search of Rafflesia's ghostly, foul-smelling blooms, more than a meter across.
We depend on plants for our very existence, but two in five of the world's species are threatened with extinction - nobody knows how many species of Rafflesia might already have disappeared through deforestation. Pathless Forest is part thrilling adventure story and part an inspirational call to action to safeguard a fast-disappearing wilderness. To view plants in a different way, as vital for our own future as for that of the planet we share. And to see if Rafflesia itself can be saved.
As a child, Chris Thorogood dreamed of seeing Rafflesia - the plant with the world's largest flowers. He crafted life-size replicas in an abandoned cemetery, carefully bringing them to life with paper and paint. Today he is a botanist at the University of Oxford's Botanic Garden and has dedicated his life to studying the biology of such extraordinary plants, working alongside botanists and foresters in Southeast Asia to document these huge, mysterious blooms.
Pathless Forest is the story of his journey to study and protect this remarkable plant - a biological enigma, still little understood, which invades vines as a leafless parasite and steals its food from them. We join him on a mind-bending adventure, as he faces a seemingly impenetrable barrier of weird, wonderful and sometimes fearsome flora; finds himself smacking off leeches, hanging off vines, wading through rivers; and following indigenous tribes into remote, untrodden rainforests in search of Rafflesia's ghostly, foul-smelling blooms, more than a meter across.
We depend on plants for our very existence, but two in five of the world's species are threatened with extinction - nobody knows how many species of Rafflesia might already have disappeared through deforestation. Pathless Forest is part thrilling adventure story and part an inspirational call to action to safeguard a fast-disappearing wilderness. To view plants in a different way, as vital for our own future as for that of the planet we share. And to see if Rafflesia itself can be saved.
288 pages, Hardcover
Published March 7, 2024
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
January 17, 2026
I enjoyed this! Easy and engaging to read, very much places you in the forest along with the botanists hunting for Rafflesia and other plants. A few too many repeated phraseologies and flowery descriptors at times, but that made it feel a bit more down to earth in a way.
August 18, 2025
Not the book I was expecting as more travelogue type nature writing but enjoyed it for the descriptive writing.
June 28, 2024
I enjoyed this book on several levels- it’s adventurous botany unusual in itself plus poetry, about obsession too as Chris travels to little visited areas of forest in Indonesia and the Philippines. You feel he may be too late in some cases and also find out what a frustrating plant he is searching for. Rafflesia is a parasitic plant and often not visible- you look for its host first, then possibly giant flower buds and if you are very lucky find some open flowers. The other search is for how to propagate it - this only seems possible in its habitat and so it’s not a formal plant hunter story. Chris therefore also works in the Philippines to research how this may be done, meanwhile the forests are being destroyed all around the area. Inspiring and depressing.
October 6, 2026
It's good to see a book dedicated to Rafflesia flowers, and I quickly snapped up a copy of this on the basis of that novelty. These are organisms that are equal parts fascinating and otherworldly, at most times hidden and festering parasitically within vines, before finally and all too briefly blooming out, co-opting the form and smell of rotting flesh. They are indeed the world's largest flowers, though it feels strange to label these blooms with as prosaic a term as 'flowers' because they are so unusual to behold, the writer comes up with many good descriptive analogies for their bizarre form.
Part of ability of these plants to inspire fascination comes from the fact they are very much of these wild places on the other side of the globe. You're unlikely to see a Rafflesia in a botanic garden any time soon, indeed the writer goes into some of the challenges ongoing with propagation, and so for most people these are things so far outside of the everyday as to be fantastical.
I've given a relatively low rating for a few reasons. Despite nature being really captivating in and of itself, I find it's rare to see nature writing done really well. It often ends up falling into a laborious account of someone's walks outside, and I'm afraid that's sort of the case here. I think there's little in the writing to really wow a reader or put them in the forests with any real vividness. It's also quite repetitive, it seems harsh to criticise it from that point of view because I appreciate the writer being comprehensive and telling the story of visiting each of these Rafflesia in turn, but the way it's written is repetitive and the expeditions do blend into a rhythm of car trips, sitting having food, then going on a big hike with anxieties over whether the flowers will be blooming or not.
I don't think the writer has a great ear for anecdotes and he struggles to lend much character to the people he's on these expeditions with. He also engages in a lot of 'I'm the first 'westerner' here, isn't this so special'. He prefaces this in a self aware way, admitting at the start how silly such kind of outdated overly romanticised ideas of intrepid explorers are, but nevertheless he indulges in those kind of comments at almost every opportunity.
I know I'm asking for a lot in what's essentially a science-adjacent non-fiction book, made primarily for information, and not a novel. But these kind of books often try to pitch themselves between the two things, and are in the business of diluting the technical detail in favour of a bit of narrative appeal. In this case the book seems to be somewhat padded with other bits and pieces, so perhaps there was space to expand and cover the Rafflesia in slightly more scientific depth.
Part of ability of these plants to inspire fascination comes from the fact they are very much of these wild places on the other side of the globe. You're unlikely to see a Rafflesia in a botanic garden any time soon, indeed the writer goes into some of the challenges ongoing with propagation, and so for most people these are things so far outside of the everyday as to be fantastical.
I've given a relatively low rating for a few reasons. Despite nature being really captivating in and of itself, I find it's rare to see nature writing done really well. It often ends up falling into a laborious account of someone's walks outside, and I'm afraid that's sort of the case here. I think there's little in the writing to really wow a reader or put them in the forests with any real vividness. It's also quite repetitive, it seems harsh to criticise it from that point of view because I appreciate the writer being comprehensive and telling the story of visiting each of these Rafflesia in turn, but the way it's written is repetitive and the expeditions do blend into a rhythm of car trips, sitting having food, then going on a big hike with anxieties over whether the flowers will be blooming or not.
I don't think the writer has a great ear for anecdotes and he struggles to lend much character to the people he's on these expeditions with. He also engages in a lot of 'I'm the first 'westerner' here, isn't this so special'. He prefaces this in a self aware way, admitting at the start how silly such kind of outdated overly romanticised ideas of intrepid explorers are, but nevertheless he indulges in those kind of comments at almost every opportunity.
I know I'm asking for a lot in what's essentially a science-adjacent non-fiction book, made primarily for information, and not a novel. But these kind of books often try to pitch themselves between the two things, and are in the business of diluting the technical detail in favour of a bit of narrative appeal. In this case the book seems to be somewhat padded with other bits and pieces, so perhaps there was space to expand and cover the Rafflesia in slightly more scientific depth.
December 18, 2025
A lurid and moving account of Thorogood's passionate research travels through Indonesia and the Philippines. The are moments of really excellent writing here, deftly bringing the fascinating subject matter, and the writer's inimitable love for it, to vivid life.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews