THE family of a missing Scots botanist have spoken of their pain in accepting he may never return, as the anniversary of his disappearance in Vietnam approaches.
Jamie Taggart's sister Janet Skidmore, 44, said her 41-year-old brother, who went missing on a plant-documenting trip at the end of last October, had always been her "rock".
She said yesterday: "I don't think he's coming back. But I could be wrong. If he had been kidnapped we would have heard, and if he had been in prison we would have had to have been told, as a foreign national.
"He may have lost his memory. We don't know. I don't know what to believe. We can't put anything to rest and we can't make any plans."
Mr Taggart runs the world-renowned Linn Botanic Gardens at Cove, Argyll and Bute, which was founded by their father Dr Jim Taggart. It is currently being tended by his father, his sister and his cousin, Helen Taggart.
His sister said she was missing his texts just saying "Hi sis" and his dedication to the garden.
The family have criticised the handling of the case by the Vietnamese authorities and revealed they have yet to receive Mr Taggart's belongings, which were found at his boarding house.
Dr Taggart has had talks in London on a number of occasions with Government officials.
The Foreign and Commonwealth Office earlier pushed the Vietnamese Ministry of Foreign Affairs for more information after pressure from First Minister Alex Salmond and Green Party leader Patrick Harvie.
The family said an inventory of 120 searches had been produced.
The findings revealed police issued notices to villages and towns in Sapa district and two neighbouring districts in Lai Chau Province called Tam Duong and Tan Uyen that a British national was missing.
Official search parties involving national park wardens and police were set up, but these ended in March.
Mr Taggart said: "The Foreign Office managed to extract an inventory of searches carried out by the Vietnamese police but it is hard to know how thorough these were.
"Despite having my son's passport, it took them four weeks to inform the embassy that he was missing."
Mr Taggart disappeared after going trekking two days into the plant-finding trip.
Mr Taggart's family and friends have raised thousands of pounds to fund continued searches and local investigations.
Dr Taggart said questions remained over how the investigation was carried out into the events after his son left his boarding house in Sapa to search for rare plants on October 31. He left the town heading towards the Hoang Lien National Park.
Mr Taggart knew the area and was last there in 2011.
It is thought he may have been going to study plants at a greater altitude than he had done before.
A spokesman for the Foreign Office said yesterday: "We will continue to provide consular support to the family and to liaise with the Vietnamese authorities."
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