The neon tetra comes from dark blackwater streams of the western Amazon, where Brazil, Peru and Colombia meet. Most neons sold in the US are now farm-raised in Southeast Asia, and their glowing stripes fade to grey at night while they rest.
.jpg/330px-Schlumbergera_%C3%97_buckleyi_(16946879165).jpg)
📍 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.
📍 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.
📍 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.
📍 Southern Brazil & Uruguay
New Zealanders love feijoas so much that many think they are a Kiwi fruit, but they come from the highlands of southern Brazil and Uruguay. Plants taken from Uruguay to France in 1890 later reached California and then New Zealand.
📍 Sinú & San Jorge valleys (Córdoba & Sucre), Colombia
The black-and-white sombrero vueltiao comes from the Zenú people of Colombia's Sinú and San Jorge valleys. It is braided from caña flecha cane, its name refers to the braid being turned round and round, and in 2004 it became a national symbol.
📍 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.