Dr. Luke Keogh

And so the wire gauze or these sorts of things meant that they needed to be covered.

But one of the biggest problems

issues on board a ship was fresh water and also someone to just take care of those plants on a long journey that was many months long.

And so these were quite the challenge.

So yes, there were people offering money and certain sums to come up with an idea of how to move different plants.

Yeah, yeah.

He's a medical doctor.

And if we also think of most botanists in those days were also medical doctors because a doctor needed to know their plants.

But yeah, he was a practicing, what we would know today as a GP.

He would do his botanizing trips early mornings or on weekends or these sorts of times.

And he would also tend his garden at his own place as well.

And so this is one of the things that is really important to understand about this early 19th century period is that if you had an interest in plants, let's say, and botany, then you might become connected to many important people of that period of time who are either working at botanic gardens, they're scientists, or they're very well-to-do people.

So he knew quite a few people, but he also was just experimenting in a Victorian sort of sense.

And he was trying different things with what he could grow inside his house.

He had a large family, so I think his wife and his daughters and his sons were also contributing to the growing greenhouse that was inside his house.

inside his house there's stories of on the dining room table there would be an exotic plant there under a bell jar and this bell jar is glass and it's sitting inside it there was a box that was filled with alpine plants that had a glass lid which was taken up to the roof of the house then brought back inside sitting on his windowsill was many many different plants

And so inside his house one day, he is experimenting with a bottle with the cork on top, and he's actually trying to get a chrysalis of a butterfly to hatch.

But what he notices inside is a fern that's growing that he couldn't get to grow outside his house on the rock wall because it was so polluted.

But inside this bottle, it's growing.

So he's discovered that plants can grow under glass for long periods of time without watering.