The Call of the Wildflower

I. THE TRAM TON PASS

On October 29, 2013, Scottish botanist James “Jamie” Taggart flew from London to Hanoi via China. He was embarking on his third plant-hunting expedition overseas, and his first solo trip. Originally, the plan was to reunite with Quang Son, a guide he had befriended on a trip to northern Vietnam in 2011. But Son was out of town on a trek when Jamie emailed him shortly before his trip. Jamie was undeterred. He had long anticipated a return to Vietnam. He decided to go it alone, and the decision only made him more excited. For about a month before he embarked, Jamie called his friend and fellow plant hunter Ian Sinclair almost every night to bounce ideas off him about where the good hunting would be.

Jamie planned to concentrate on the upper slopes of the Hoang Lien mountains, whose lower slopes he’d explored in 2011. On his first night in Vietnam, Jamie stayed in a bed-and-breakfast in Hanoi. He texted his father to say he had arrived safely, but had not slept well, and that he would proceed to Sa Pa, the town that would be the base for the expedition, in the morning. “Three days should do the high ground,” he said.

The next day, Jamie took the over-night train to Lao Cai, a city of about one hundred thousand people just across the Red River from China. The trains are well appointed, but the combination of a bumpy ride and a dawn arrival make a full night’s sleep impossible. It’s one of those journeys where you get to know the whole carriage through involuntary eavesdropping. Outside, banana plants proliferate like giant dandelions, and tropical moisture makes for a near-perpetual mist.

But on October 31 there was little mist. It was a clear day and the sun was whole and bold as a yolk. Jamie had decided to stay in one of the quieter guesthouses in central Sa Pa, the Ngoc Anh. It was located on a back street overlooking the church, not far from the sunken courtyard where locals sat on the steps and played kick-around soccer. Jamie was given a room on the third floor and he dropped off most of his stuff there, leaving a bag that contained most of his clothes, his passport, and several of his note-books. He took his camera and phone with him. He had forgotten to bring a phone charger but he had a spare battery and he told his father, when he texted from Hanoi, that he’d managed to recharge his phone during the stop-over in China. It’s unclear how long that charge lasted.

At about 9:30 a.m., a little more than an hour...