Drunken vandal destroys flatmate's rare plant collection

Joshua Styles' collection of rare and endangered plants, destroyed by his flatmate. Photo / Joshua Styles

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 subject being destroyed by a vomiting flatmate.

That was the sight that greeted Joshua Styles last week when he woke at his home in Ormskirk 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 Styles asking his flatmate, a student at nearby Edge Hill University, to make less noise in the early hours and contribute his share of the bills.

Styles told The Telegraph: "My flatmate came 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. Those plants meant everything to me."

Styles, 22, was forced to go to his GP after burning his hands while trying to clean away the chemicals.

"My fingertips were all red and puffy from the bleach," he said. "It was pretty painful."

Among the plants destroyed was a Wahlenbergia plant and a Scleranthus carnation. Styles has now reported the damage to police and Edge Hill.

Since setting up his project in autumn last year Styles had painstakingly amassed his collection of rare plants indigenous to north west England with the aim of reintroducing these vulnerable plants back into protected sites in the wild.

Working with Lancashire Wildlife Trust, Cheshire Wildlife Trust, the WWT and Natural England, he had established a network of sites from where he would both gather and plant specimens.

The rare Dune Helleborine orchids @edgehill are in full flower now!! @ukorchids @BiologyEHU pic.twitter.com/sTptLsLujB

— Joshua Styles (@joshual951) July 6, 2017

Even before completing his BSc in ecology at Edge Hill University, in Ormskirk, Lancashire, last year Styles had discovered rare a Dune Helleborine orchid on campus, one of only 100 locations in the UK where the plant has been recorded.

Since writing on social media about his flatmate's vandalism supporters have launched a crowdfunding page to help raise £5000 to repair the damage.

Styles said he had been overwhelmed by people's generosity.

"These past few days have just turned everything around...absolutely lost for words with the level of support," he said. "I've been astounding and amazed by the level of support over the past few days I have had from people, both online and in person…

"Words cannot express how grateful I am to anyone who showed sympathy and gave me help in relation to this initiative."

Styles has taken the surviving plants to his mother's home in Sandbach, Cheshire, from where he intends to rebuild his collection. In some cases this will involve travelling to remote islands off the Welsh and Cumbrian coast to source plant species.

"It's really painstaking and hard work, but it has to be done," he said. "So many species of British plants are going extinct every year."