This 'living Christmas tree' isn't a true pine, and it grows wild only on tiny Norfolk 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.
📍 Iberia & southwestern France
Rabbits are Iberian natives: the oldest fossils of the species, 600,000 years old, come from southern Spain. Australia's rabbit plague began with just 24 rabbits released in Victoria in 1859.
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📍 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, some 60,000-70,000, that it is nicknamed the 'Jacaranda City'.
📍 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.
📍 Eastwood (Sydney), Australia
The tart green Granny Smith sprang up by a creek in Eastwood, now a suburb of Sydney, in 1868. Maria Ann 'Granny' Smith had tossed out some French crab apples there, and she grew the lucky seedling on.
📍 Southeast Queensland & northern NSW, Australia
Macadamias are native to eastern Australia, the only widely grown food plant native to that continent. Seeds reached Hawaii in the 1880s, and Hawaii led world production for decades until Australia overtook it in 1997.
📍 Honolulu, Hawaii
Madeiran craftsmen who sailed to Hawaii in 1879 turned their little machete guitar into the ukulele in the 1880s, and King Kalākaua made it a royal favourite. The Hawaiian name roughly means 'jumping flea'.