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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.
📍 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.
📍 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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📍 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.
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📍 Ecuador (Montecristi to Cuenca)
Panama hats are woven in Ecuador from toquilla palm straw. They got the wrong name because travellers, including Gold Rush prospectors crossing the isthmus, bought them in Panama. UNESCO listed the weaving craft in 2012.
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📍 Southern Bolivia & NW Argentina
Peanuts were domesticated in South America, most likely in southern Bolivia or northwestern Argentina, where the most wild-like varieties still grow. The oldest known remains, about 7,600 years old, come from Peru.
📍 Northeast coast of Brazil
Long before bubble tea, the Tupi people of Brazil's coast called the starch that settles out of squeezed cassava tipi'óka, roughly 'sediment'. Portuguese settlers took up the word after 1500, and cassava itself is native to Brazil.