It was not until the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that exploration of the  _ world began on a large scale. European middle classes took great interest in collecting new plants. This attraction to exotic plants grew as European nations moved into other parts of the world such as Asia andprefix = st1 /Australia. Brave young men took the opportunity of going on botanical expeditions even though they were to be faced with deadly disease, near-starvation, severe environments and conflicts with the local people. Sir Joseph Banks was among the brave. In 1760, he collected vast quantities of plants in what is now known as Australia. None of these plants had been recorded by Europeans before. However, Banks was not able to bring those plants back to Europe and let them grow in his homeland because keeping plants alive during long land or sea voyages was a great challenge at that time. Large numbers of seeds failed to grow after long sea voyage or trips across land far away from Europe. In 1833 the invention of the Wardian case, a tightly sealed portable glass container, made it possible for two cases of British plants to survive the six-month journey to Australia. And the return trip in 1835 with Australian species lasted eight months at sea, all the species successfully arriving inLondon. China was a land the earliest European plant collectors would explore from time to time. . Not only did Europeans collect large numbers of plants to grow in Western gardens, but also they were very excited with the knowledge that Chinahad a vast variety of plants. A British man called Robert Fortune developed his fluency in Chinese and was disguised as a Chinese man so that he could travel aroundChinaunnoticed. He managed to ship 20,000 tea plants from Shanghai toIndia, where a successful tea industry was established. What was the major problem Sir Joseph Banks had transporting plants to his country?
The plants did not survive the long journey. There were not good ships to carry the plants. Only seeds of the plants could be preserved. Transportation by land was not accessible.