The Plant Whisperer of Sri Lanka: Meet the Soft-Spoken Scientist Who Un-extincted a Forest

From forgotten species to full-blown floral drama, Himesh Jayasinghe is rewriting Sri Lanka’s botanical history—and making the experts squirm.

It’s not every day a civil engineer ditches his day job, dives headfirst into jungles, and emerges with hundreds of plant species thought to be extinct, unseen, or just plain unknown. But that’s exactly what Himesh Jayasinghe has done—quietly, methodically, and completely off-script.

Yes, that Himesh—the unassuming 30-something with thick glasses, a photographic memory, and a flair for wandering into mountaintops, tree canopies, and anywhere else most botanists wouldn’t dare. While the rest of us were scrolling through social media or sipping lattes, Himesh was out in the wilds of Sri Lanka—bringing more than 100 “possibly extinct” species back from the dead.

Wait—extinct? Not so fast.

Let’s rewind to 2012, when Sri Lanka’s National Red List read like a botanical obituary: 177 species listed as possibly extinct, five declared extinct, and two extinct in the wild. Grim stuff. Fast forward to 2020, and the number of missing-in-action species had magically shrunk. Confused? So were the scientists.

When one sharp-eyed botanist flagged the discrepancy, he called up the head of the Red List committee, Siril Wijesundara. “There’s a mistake,” he said. Siril just laughed. “That’s Himesh for you.”

Turns out this mystery man had personally gone and found three of the five “extinct” species, both of the ones thought extinct in the wild, and over 100 more that everyone had given up on.

Who is this guy?

Not a botanist by training, that’s for sure. Himesh studied civil engineering, wrote not one but two books on butterflies, then accidentally fell in love with the plants the butterflies relied on. One thing led to another, and soon he was hunting down larval food plants, then tracking them into the wilderness. What started as butterfly research turned into a full-blown botanical adventure.

He learned the hard way—studying specimens, figuring out where the old explorers had failed, and heading straight for the places nobody bothered with: waterfall spray zones, isolated rock cliffs, epiphytic heights in tree canopies. While most collectors poked around familiar forest floors, Himesh scaled trees and crossed rivers.

And guess what? It worked.

To date, he’s brought to light over 210 plant species never previously reported from Sri Lanka, some known only from India, some never known at all. Another 150 are likely new to science entirely.

Formal names? He’s holding off—for now. In his upcoming 680-page epic Discovery: Additions to the Flora of Ceylon (set to drop July 22), he’s giving them placeholder names like Memecylon sp. 1 until taxonomists can catch up. And just to be safe, he’s preserved over 3,700 physical specimens and thousands of photos. It’s the botanical equivalent of dropping a surprise album and leaving critics scrambling.

A one-man revolution

The establishment didn’t quite know what to do with him at first—after all, he didn’t fit the mold. But it didn’t take long for the experts to get on board. Siril Wijesundara got him a PhD slot at University of Colombo. He graduated in 2022. The National Institute of Fundamental Studies (NIFS) offered him a fellowship. Even Dilmah Tea stepped in to fund his fieldwork.

His findings are so significant they’ve sparked actual policy action. One famous rediscovery, Crudia zeylanica, nearly derailed a highway project. Developers wanted to bulldoze right over it, but conservationists—and a suddenly awakened public—pushed back. More trees were found, the plant was cultivated, and the project was redesigned. In the end, Himesh’s discovery changed the blueprint of development itself.

Still, he’s not done

“There are so many places I still haven’t been,” he shrugs. “When I can’t go into the field anymore, maybe I’ll sit in the herbarium and finish the formal taxonomy.” Until then? He’s busy being the man who outpaced a whole generation of botanists—without a formal degree in biology.

One last twist?

All of his data—every specimen, every photo, every field note—is being released to the public.

Because, in Himesh’s world, science isn’t about gatekeeping. It’s about discovery. And sometimes, it’s about rewriting everything you thought you knew