Marc Finnell

And that moisture condensing on the inside of the glass, it created its own water cycle.

Now that's really important because fresh water on a ship, very precious.

The less water wasted on the plants, the happier the crew tended to be.

Although on this particular 1833 voyage to Australia that the captain, Charles Mallard, he was already a massive plant nerd.

And he was very happy to have this giant glass plant box taking up space on his ship.

The experiment worked.

Two cases of plants travelled all the way from London to Sydney and they arrived happy and they arrived healthy.

The box travelled in what would eventually become known as the Wardian case, named after Nathaniel Ward.

It was his creation and he was thrilled that the plants arrived safely in Sydney.

But remember, Ward was a doctor.

So after he created this revolutionary way to transport plants, dude just went back to his day job, treating patients.

However, there was another man who saw the Wardian case and immediately realised its potential.

A friend of Ward's by the name of George Loddages.

And so Lotter just sets into motion, I guess, a production line of sorts to create more and more Wardian cases to transport plants from his nursery to places all over the world.

So Ward obviously gets naming rights, but didn't really profit from it, did he?

Ward wrote about his invention in a book published in 1842, but he never patented it.

So technically, Nathaniel Ward didn't own the Wardian case at all.

And very quickly, it spread everywhere.

Botanic gardens, plant hunters, nurseries.

Suddenly these glass cases were travelling