Where plants come from
Farmers, traders and gardeners carried plants far from home. Each story shows where a flower, tree or crop grows wild or was first grown.
29 stories from 6 continents
- Africa · 7
- Asia · 3
- Europe · 2
- North America · 8
- South America · 5
- Oceania · 4
Africa
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 are thought to get pollen dusted onto their feet. Joseph Banks named the plant after Queen Charlotte, Duchess of Mecklenburg-Strelitz.
Busy Lizzie (impatiens)
📍 Eastern Africa (Kenya to Mozambique)
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.
Flamboyant tree (royal poinciana)
📍 Western & northern Madagascar
Flamboyant trees blaze red along streets from Puerto Rico to India, yet for a long time nobody knew where they came from. Only in 1932 were wild ones found, in the dry forests of western Madagascar, their sole native home.
Garden geranium (Pelargonium)
📍 Western & Eastern Cape, South Africa
Balcony 'geraniums' are really pelargoniums from South Africa's Cape. Ships stopping at the Cape probably brought the first to Leiden's botanical garden before 1600, and crosses of two wild Cape species gave Europe its favourite window-box flower.
Lucky bamboo
📍 Central Africa (Cameroon to the Congo)
Despite nicknames like 'Chinese water bamboo', lucky bamboo is not a bamboo and not from China: it's a dracaena that grows wild in Central Africa, from Cameroon to the Congo. Its scientific name honours Henry Sander, a German-born orchid grower in England.
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.
Asia
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.
Ginkgo tree
📍 Mountains of south-western & eastern China
The ginkgo is Tokyo's official tree, but it comes from China, where a few groves that may be truly wild survive in mountain refuges. Its ancestors go back 170 million years, and female trees drop seeds that smell like vomit.
Nordmann fir (the Christmas tree)
📍 Mountains of the eastern Black Sea (NE Turkey, Georgia & the western Caucasus)
Europe's favourite Christmas tree sounds Nordic, but the Nordmann fir grows wild in the mountains around the eastern Black Sea, in Turkey, Georgia and the Russian Caucasus. It is named after the Finnish naturalist Alexander von Nordmann.
Europe
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.
Sugar beet
📍 Prussia (Berlin & Silesia), Germany/Poland
The beet that gives about a fifth of the world's sugar was bred in Prussia: Andreas Marggraf found sugar in beets in Berlin in 1747, and his student Franz Achard bred the strain behind the White Silesian beet and set up the first beet-sugar factory in Silesia in 1801.
North America
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Canola (the oilseed plant)
📍 Canadian Prairies (Winnipeg & Saskatoon)
Fields of yellow canola look age-old, but canola was bred from rapeseed in the 1970s by Canadian scientists in Manitoba and Saskatoon, who cut its erucic acid to make an edible oil. The name comes from 'Canadian oil'.
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.
Douglas fir
📍 Western North America (British Columbia to California & the Rockies)
The Douglas fir grows wild in western North America, from British Columbia to California and along the Rockies. It isn't a true fir, and its name honours David Douglas, a Scottish plant collector who sent its seeds home to Britain in the 1820s.
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Monstera (Swiss cheese plant)
📍 Southern Mexico & Guatemala
The Swiss cheese plant comes from 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.
Plumeria (frangipani)
📍 Mexico, Central America & the Caribbean
Hawaii's favourite garland flower is a newcomer: plumeria is native to Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean, and a German doctor, William Hillebrand, brought it over in 1860. Its other name, frangipani, comes from an Italian marquis's perfume.
Poinsettia
📍 Pacific slopes of Mexico & Guatemala
Christmas poinsettias grow wild as shrubs on the Pacific slopes of Mexico and Guatemala. Their red 'petals' are really leaves, and the plant is named after Joel Poinsett, a US envoy to Mexico who sent it home in the 1820s.
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Saguaro cactus
📍 Sonoran Desert (Arizona, USA & Sonora, Mexico)
The giant cactus of Western films grows wild only in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona and northwest Mexico. It grows so slowly that its first arms appear after 50 to 100 years, and it can live for more than 150 years.
South America
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Anthurium (flamingo flower)
📍 Southwestern Colombia & Ecuador
Hawaii's glossy, heart-shaped anthurium is native to Colombia and Ecuador and only reached the islands from London in 1889. The red 'heart' isn't a petal: the real flowers are the tiny bumps on its spike.
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, tens of thousands, that it is nicknamed the 'Jacaranda City'.
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Water hyacinth
📍 Amazon basin, Brazil
Water hyacinth now chokes Lake Victoria, the Congo River and waterways across tropical Asia, but this floating plant comes from the Amazon basin. Gardeners spread it for its lilac flowers, and its mats can double in size in one to two weeks.
Oceania
Kentia palm
📍 Lord Howe Island, Australia
The classic palm of hotel lobbies and Victorian parlours grows wild only on Lord Howe Island, a speck of land in the Tasman Sea off Australia. Islanders have gathered its seeds for the world's nurseries since the 1870s.
Norfolk Island pine
📍 Norfolk Island (Australia), South Pacific
This 'living Christmas tree' isn't a true pine, and it grows wild only on tiny Norfolk Island and nearby Phillip Island, between New Zealand and New Caledonia. In 1774 Captain Cook hoped its tall, straight trunks would make ship masts, but the wood wasn't tough enough.
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”.
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Tea tree (source of tea tree oil)
📍 Northern New South Wales & southeast Queensland, Australia
The tea tree isn't related to the tea plant: it's an Australian myrtle that grows wild along streams and swampy flats in northern New South Wales and southeast Queensland. Its leaf oil became a commercial product in the 1920s.