The Light

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A clever Box - developed to help in the 1830s, and survival of plants, the long travel - a Revolution, much More Than in botany.

picture The Scene : South-Eastern China, in the early 1840s, the botanist and plant-hunter Robert Fortune is "very upset" at the paltry collection of plants of its Chinese servant collected. Clearly, instead of trekking commanded in the mountains, as The Servant had hardly dared to The Shore .

Fortune accepted laziness of the servants, But insisted he was once told by the people who lived in The Hills were dangerous. Nonsense, said Fortune to go to the determination to send himself, and the rejection of his captain, the offer of the crew members for protection.

At first, everything went off smoothly. Foreigners are a rare sight in goods and assets, moved a whole lot, But it was "General civil".

As he later wrote, with "300 or 400 of the Chinese - both sexes and all age groups Looking down on us with amazement", he filled boxes with A Number of valuable sample.

Soon, however, luck was sent robbed, and his servant, "pale with Fright " - was surrounded by knife-wielding robbers.

"My poor plants collected with so much care have been added on the fly in All Directions ," he said.

But the result did not seem to influence on the young Scot confidence.

Later in The Trip , he was warned, an area in which he was sailing were going to be swarmed by pirates.

"nonsense," he said again. "No, the pirates attack us. "You can probably imagine what happened.

However, the happiness happiness have finally returned to Shanghai, where he "sent eight glazed cases of live plants for England."

He closed his later 400-page memoir, Three years wanderings in the Northern provinces of China, by she noted with satisfaction the Anemone japonica he was transported on the whole world "was in full bloom in The Garden of The Society to Chiswick ".

luck was employed by these people in Chiswick - the Horticultural Society of London, now The Royal Horticultural Society and the glazed cases survived, that his Chinese adventure, it had to hunt a whole lot easier, the system.

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So-called "Wardian cases" had been developed in the previous ten years, the 1830s, by Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward, a doctor from London's East End .

He was an enthusiast, a fern, But had struggled to grow in the infested city in the air.

ward's Invention was clearly easier and, in retrospect,.

glass, wood, putty, color - it was essentially a sealed mini-greenhouse. You in The Light . It was the soot and the smoke. And it kept the moisture in, so there was no need to water the plants.

This was not a feat of engineering, But the result of a questioning mind. It was generally assumed that plants are needed, the open-air. Ward wondered if You might.

The Interior of Nathaniel Ward, fern greenhouse, with flowers of the gardens and greenhouses of Europe, published in 1851

His ferns thrived. And was soon, that he may have solved a problem that had how long vexed plant Hunters , their plants alive on a long sea voyage.

Put them under the deck, and they suffered from the lack of light. Place them on the deck, and You suffered from the salty sea spray.

As an experiment, and was arranged to ship two cases of plants in Australia.

a Few months later, a letter from the captain of The Ship , the "wishes warm happiness came".

Most of the ferns were "alive and strong" and the grasses were "trying to slide The Top of The Box ".

The Ship returned with a ward's case with Australian plants - again, perfectly healthy.

the municipality published a book about his Invention On the growth of plants in Glazed cases, is Closely and was confident it would have far-reaching consequences. He was right - But not in the way he expected.

More things, the thought of the modern economy:

He, the people, like the ferns, would benefit from the polluted London air, and to have planned a large sealed greenhouses, in which people in recovery, bot of measles or consumption.

He had not seen before, his case was about the transformation of global agriculture, politics and trade.

Perhaps he should have, because plants search never had to perennials only.

"The Father of modern plant hunting," Sir Joseph Banks , was aware of the economic potential of moving plants from one colonial Outpost to another.

In the late 1700s, he turned to London's Kew Gardens , in a kind of Imperial settlement place for the Flora .

Founded in 1759, Kew Gardens is quickly collected plant specimens from all over The World

It was banks, captain William Bligh to embark on his fateful journey on the HMS Bounty which ended in the infamous mutiny.

Bligh should bring fruit, bread-plants of The West Indian Islands, like the banks hoped You would be a cheap way of feeding slaves.

thanks to the Wardian case, The Process of Transport of plants wind in the sails had now.

Before and after a commercial importer, You can expect 19 out of 20 plants die on the sea.

In the municipality of the cases, 19 out of 20 have survived.

It was the Wardian cases, for example, that the spread of the Cavendish banana in The World . This is the variety that You see in stores today. William Cavendish was The President of the Horticultural Society .

Wardian cases, Brazil's rubber industry destroyed.

With the prices high, The British Foreign Office sent a resourceful amateur botanist on the Amazon sneak some rubber seeds. They germinated in Kew and seedlings were shipped to East Asia . Brazil could not grew to compete with the colonial plantations, as a result.

And Wardian cases, helped to handle, break the China on the tea market.

the municipality published his book in 1847, a few years after great Britain won The First Opium War . If the Chinese decided, the adoption of the Indian face opium built in exchange for their tea, The British sent gunboats to change your mind. You can see why: the taxes on tea accounted for nearly a 10th of The British government revenue in the period.

So the East India Company, the practically of great Britain ruled the subcontinent order, decided it needed a backup approach: grow more tea in India .

According to legend, the Chinese Emperor Shen Nung, tea was discovered in 2732BC, when a leaf blew into a pot of boiling water

this meant That the tea plants needed to smuggling goods from China. And there was only one man for the job.

Robert Fortune had learned, on his first expedition, which, if he could shaved his head, and he wore a wig and a Chinese dress, he just about unnoticed. Suitable disguised, he delivered finally, nearly 20,000 tea plants for his new employer.

But perhaps The Most important impact of the Wardian case of plants to Europe from far-flung Places - it was going so more people from Europe to far-away Places .

Wardian cases, allowed the cinchona-tree, which are sent from South America to India and Sri Lanka . From its bark quinine came have contributed to the prevention of malaria.

to the car That it will be less scary for the Europeans to the tropics; some historians think that Africa, probably not be settled without it.

After All , not every passenger was as blithely impervious to the risk that the death of Robert Fortune the brave.

The author writes the Financial Times Undercover Economist column. the show is on the BBC World Service. You can find and or

plants, trade

Source of news: bbc.com