Dr. Luke Keogh

It's a little bit difficult in all that smog to get a few things growing.

There was a thirst for plants, exotic plants at the time.

And if you wanted plants from different locations, you had to move them.

Yet it's hard.

Only one in 1,000 plants arrived back in London alive.

Through this small box you can see these very big changes around the world.

Plants in history tell some interesting stories and they intersect with a lot of different parts of history, our environment, economy.

And I often find myself in the 19th century, 18th century, looking at plants in history.

People were collecting ferns.

It's even called the fern craze.

At that time, it was hard to move plants because think about that to travel on a ship.

They needed fresh water to travel.

You need someone to care for them on the ship.

And so it was quite difficult.

Only one in 1,000 plants arrived back in London alive.

And so as people were moving plants from different colonial locations back to centres such as London, you weren't really getting many plants that would survive that journey.

So anything from a basket, some of them look a lot like a bookshelf in some ways, and inside it were sort of wire gauze all over the front of it and plants were standing up.

There were open boxes, there were caskets that were closed.

There were a whole range of ways that people were trying to move plants.

But one of the things on a ship was also difficult was that there were rodents, there were different animals eating these plants.