The busy Lizzie of window boxes and park beds grows wild in eastern Africa, from Kenya to Mozambique. Its Latin name, Impatiens, means 'impatient': the ripe seed pods burst open, flinging out their seeds.
📍 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.
📍 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.
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📍 Iceland
Icelandic horses descend from ponies brought by Norse settlers more than 1,000 years ago. Today no horse may be imported into Iceland, and one that leaves can never come back. Many can do an extra-smooth gait called the tölt.
📍 Kalahari & southern Africa
The spiky horned melon grows wild around the Kalahari, where it is one of the few sources of water in the dry season. It was the 'African horned cucumber' until the 1980s, when it was renamed kiwano for export from New Zealand.
📍 Durban, South Africa
There's no bunny in a bunny chow: it's a hollowed-out loaf of white bread filled with curry. It was created in the 1940s by the Indian community of Durban, where locals still order a 'quarter mutton'.
📍 Yorubaland (SW Nigeria & Benin)
The shekere, a dried gourd wrapped in a net of beads or cowrie shells, comes from the Yoruba of West Africa; an 1852 Yoruba dictionary already lists it. It later became a staple of Cuban and Brazilian music too.