Where animals and plants come from
Farmers, traders and explorers carried plants and animals far from home. Each story shows where a species or crop originally comes from.
20 stories from 6 continents
- Africa · 3
- Asia · 4
- Europe · 4
- North America · 4
- South America · 3
- Oceania · 2
Bird-of-paradise flower (Strelitzia)
📍 Eastern Cape & KwaZulu-Natal coast, South Africa
Bird-of-paradise flowers grow wild along South Africa's eastern coast, where sunbirds perching on the blue petals get pollen dusted onto their feet. Joseph Banks named the plant after Queen Charlotte, Duchess of Mecklenburg-Strelitz.
Oil palm
📍 West Africa (Gulf of Guinea coast)
The oil palm is native to West and Central Africa, from Gambia down to Angola, where people have used it for millennia. Only much later was it planted in Malaysia and Indonesia, now home to huge plantations.
Pearl millet
📍 Western Sahel (northern Mali)
Pearl millet was first farmed on the southern edge of the Sahara, around today's northern Mali, more than 4,000 years ago. It later spread to India, which now grows more of it than any other country.
Chicken
📍 Mainland Southeast Asia
Chickens descend mainly from the red junglefowl of Southeast Asia. The oldest known chicken bones, roughly 3,500 years old, come from Ban Non Wat in northeast Thailand, where wild birds were likely drawn to farmers' rice fields.
Chrysanthemum (garden mum)
📍 China
Garden chrysanthemums were bred in China for many centuries before they reached Japan. There the flower became the emperor's emblem, which is why the Japanese monarchy is called the Chrysanthemum Throne.
Domestic goat
📍 Fertile Crescent (Zagros & Taurus mountains)
Goats were domesticated about 10,000 years ago in the hills of the Fertile Crescent. The oldest known herded goats come from Ganj Dareh in Iran's Zagros Mountains, where their wild ancestor, the bezoar ibex, still lives.
Golden hamster (the pet hamster)
📍 Near Aleppo, Syria
In 1930 zoologist Israel Aharoni caught a mother hamster and her litter near Aleppo, Syria. DNA studies show all domestic golden hamsters descend from one female, probably that very mother.
European rabbit
📍 Iberia & southwestern France
Rabbits are Iberian natives: the oldest fossils of the species, 600,000 years old, come from southern Spain. Australia's rabbit plague began with just 24 rabbits released in Victoria in 1859.
Great Dane (dog breed)
📍 Germany
Despite its name, the Great Dane is a German breed with no known link to Denmark. Germans call it the Deutsche Dogge; the 'Dane' comes from its French name, grand danois.
Horse chestnut (conker tree)
📍 Mountains of northern Greece & Albania
The conker tree of British playgrounds is a Balkan native: wild horse chestnuts survive only in a few mountain forests of northern Greece, Albania and nearby. Everywhere else, it was planted.
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Merino sheep
📍 Iberian Peninsula
Merino sheep were developed in medieval Spain, which guarded the fine-wool breed as a monopoly: smuggling one out could mean death. Merinos only reached Australia in 1797, via South Africa.
Dahlia
📍 Central Mexico highlands
Almost every wild dahlia species grows only in Mexico, the genus's home and centre of diversity. Spanish botanist Antonio José Cavanilles named the flower in 1791 after the Swedish botanist Anders Dahl.
Eastern grey squirrel
📍 Eastern North America
Britain's grey squirrels are American: the species is native to eastern North America and was released on British estates from the 1870s. It has since displaced most of Britain's native red squirrels.
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Monstera (Swiss cheese plant)
📍 Southern Mexico & Guatemala
The Swiss cheese plant grows wild only in the rainforests of southern Mexico and Guatemala. Its name 'deliciosa' means delicious: the ripe fruit is edible.
Monterey pine
📍 Central coast of California, USA
Monterey pine grows wild only along a short stretch of California's central coast and on two Mexican islands. Yet it makes up about 90% of New Zealand's plantation forests.
Bougainvillea
📍 South America (Brazil & neighbours)
Bougainvillea, the flower of Mediterranean balconies, is a South American native that grows wild from Brazil to Peru and Argentina. It is named after French explorer Louis-Antoine de Bougainville, whose expedition recorded it.
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Christmas cactus (Schlumbergera)
📍 Coastal mountains of southeast Brazil
The Christmas cactus is no desert plant: its wild Schlumbergera ancestors grow on trees and rocks in the misty coastal mountains of southeast Brazil, where they're called flor de maio, 'May flower', as they bloom in the southern autumn.
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Jacaranda tree
📍 South-central South America (N Argentina, Paraguay, S Bolivia)
Jacarandas grow wild in south-central South America, where the species is now listed as Vulnerable. Pretoria in South Africa has planted so many, some 60,000-70,000, that it is nicknamed the 'Jacaranda City'.
Budgerigar (budgie)
📍 Inland Australia
Wild budgies live across the dry interior of Australia, and every wild one is green and yellow. The blue, white and yellow pets are colour forms bred in captivity, where budgies have been raised since the 1850s.
Sugarcane
📍 New Guinea
Sugarcane was first domesticated in New Guinea. Austronesian voyagers spread it across the Pacific and west to India, where Alexander's admiral Nearchus marvelled at “reeds that produce honey without bees”.