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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'.
📍 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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📍 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.
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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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📍 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.
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📍 Buenos Aires, Argentina
The first feature-length cartoon wasn't Snow White (1937) but El Apóstol, made in Buenos Aires in 1917 by Quirino Cristiani from 58,000 frames of cut-out animation. Its only copy was lost in a 1926 studio fire.
📍 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.