Georg Wilhem Steller was one of Europe’s foremost naturalists. In 1741 he accompanied Vitus Bering on a historic voyage to Alaska, where he discovered the Steller’s Eider and the now extinct Steller’s Sea cow. Steller collected and classified scores of unknown plants. But Commander Vitus Bering refused to allow him to ship the speciments home, in essence, saying, "Are you nuts? We don’t have room for our toothbrushes, let alone a bunch of plants!" Thing is, even if Steller WAS able to stow the plants on board for the journey home, they probably wouldn’t have survived. It wasn’t until a century later that plant hunters successfully transported exotic flowers, trees and shrubs specimens across the oceans. The answer came in 1833 when Dr. Ward of London, placed two ferns in soil at the bottom of two miniature sealed greenhouses, or Wardian cases, the precursor to the modern-day terrarium, and shipped them to Australia. They arrived safely. The success of the mini greenhouses changed global commerce. In the 1840’s, for example, 20,000 tea plants were shipped from Shanghai to the Himalayas by this method, and so started the Indian tea industry. This piece is a sample module in the UpBeet Gardener series and first ran on October 26, 2004.

Georg Wilhem Steller was one of Europe’s foremost naturalists. In 1741 he accompanied Vitus Bering on a historic voyage to Alaska, where he discovered the Steller’s Eider and the now extinct Steller’s Sea cow. Steller collected and classified scores of unknown plants. But Commander Vitus Bering refused to allow him to ship the speciments home, in essence, saying, "Are you nuts? We don’t have room for our toothbrushes, let alone a bunch of plants!" Thing is, even if Steller WAS able to stow the plants on board for the journey home, they probably wouldn’t have survived. It wasn’t until a century later that plant hunters successfully transported exotic flowers, trees and shrubs specimens across the oceans. The answer came in 1833 when Dr. Ward of London, placed two ferns in soil at the bottom of two miniature sealed greenhouses, or Wardian cases, the precursor to the modern-day terrarium, and shipped them to Australia. They arrived safely. The success of the mini greenhouses changed global commerce. In the 1840’s, for example, 20,000 tea plants were shipped from Shanghai to the Himalayas by this method, and so started the Indian tea industry. This piece is a sample module in the UpBeet Gardener series and first ran on October 26, 2004.