The Botanical Explorers
Discover the daring, high-stakes adventures behind the plants in your garden and pantry. Learn how global expeditions, espionage, and ingenious inventions reshaped the natural world.
Like Duolingo, but for The Botanical Explorers. Tomo turns the whole topic into a game you play five minutes a day, until it actually sticks.
A short one: 10 levels across 2 sections, about 20 minutes end to end, roughly 4 days at five minutes a day. It moves through Daring Quests for Hidden Flora and The Science and Legacy of Plant Hunting. It starts from scratch.
Free forever · No credit card · iPhone & Android
Key ideas in The Botanical Explorers
- Nations maintained strict legal monopolies over lucrative crops like tea, rubber, and spices
- Exporting viable seeds or cuttings from these territories was often illegal and treated as treason or theft
- Botanical explorers were dispatched specifically to bypass these trade bans and smuggle live specimens out
- Robert Fortune disguised himself in local Chinese dress to penetrate forbidden interior tea-growing regions
- He collected thousands of viable tea seedlings and seeds using portable glass Wardian cases to keep them alive on ships
- His successful heist shifted commercial tea production to British plantations in Darjeeling and Assam, India
- Cinchona bark produced quinine, the only effective treatment at the time against malaria
- South American countries guarded wild cinchona stands to maintain their global monopoly on the cure
- Securing cinchona seeds allowed European empires to keep troops alive in malaria-heavy regions across Africa and Asia
- Governments, imperial navies, and joint-stock trade companies directly financed botanical expeditions to gain economic leverage
- Plant hunters frequently used stealth, disguises, and bribes to smuggle guarded specimens past customs
- Victorian Orchidmania turned rare orchids into ultimate luxury status symbols for wealthy estates
- Commercial nurseries financed high-stakes expeditions to beat rivals to novel varieties that could fetch thousands at auction
- The obsession created a cutthroat market where being the first to introduce a new bloom yielded massive profits
- Orchid hunters scaled cliffs and tall trees to harvest epiphytes with no ropes or rescue infrastructure
- Tropical fevers like malaria regularly killed collectors and local porters far from any medical help
You've tried the other tabs
Thirty open tabs. Four facts you actually kept.
You watched. You nodded. By Sunday it was gone.
One answer, then back to scrolling.
Eight weeks. You meant to finish. You didn't.
Tomo gives The Botanical Explorers the Duolingo treatment: levels, streaks, and quick quizzes that test what you just learned. That game loop is what the tabs above never had, so it's the one you actually finish.
Here's what playing it feels like
A real question from this course. Take your best guess.
What often happened if someone tried to take living tea or spice seeds out of these territories?
Get it right to open this lesson and 9 more in the app.
How to learn The Botanical Explorers, step by step
Go in order. 10 short levels across 2 sections, about 20 minutes in all, five minutes a day.
- 1
Daring Quests for Hidden Flora
- High-Stakes Botanical Heists
- Orchids, Peril, and Canopy Fever
- 2
The Science and Legacy of Plant Hunting
- Inventions That Moved the Jungle
- Spotting Explorer History in Everyday Greenery
2 sections · 4 units · 10 levels. Built to play, not to enroll.
Questions about The Botanical Explorers
How do I learn The Botanical Explorers?
Go in order: start with Daring Quests for Hidden Flora, then The Science and Legacy of Plant Hunting. On Tomo that's 10 short levels, about 20 minutes in all, played five minutes a day. Start free and play the first level in under a minute.
Is there a Duolingo-style app for The Botanical Explorers?
Yes. Tomo works like Duolingo: short daily lessons, streaks and quick quizzes. The Botanical Explorers is one of its free courses, and you can type any other topic to get a course of your own.
Is The Botanical Explorers free?
Yes. The Botanical Explorers is playable on Tomo's free plan, which doesn't expire. No credit card, no waitlist. Download the app and start your first lesson.
How long does it take to learn The Botanical Explorers?
10 levels across 2 sections, about 20 minutes of play in total. It's built for five minutes a day, so you finish it a little at a time instead of all at once.
Do I need any background to start The Botanical Explorers?
No. It's pitched at a beginner level, so it starts where you are and builds up. If you can tap a phone, you can start.
Tomo is in ChatGPT
Tomo is also a ChatGPT plugin: the same playable courses, built and played inside your chat.
Add Tomo to ChatGPT- What to ask
- “Make me a Tomo course on black holes.” “Turn this chat into a Tomo course.”
- What you get
- Quick questions with instant feedback, hearts and stars, ready to play in about a minute.
- Where it goes
- No sign-up to start. Connect your Tomo account and your streak carries on in the app.
You pick the voice
The Botanical Explorers is taught in the Bestie style: your friend who just gets it. Want a different feel? In the app you can spin up the same topic in any of Tomo's teaching styles. Same facts, totally different vibe.
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Start The Botanical Explorers today.
Download Tomo, search The Botanical Explorers, and play your first lesson in under a minute.