Plant Hunters: The Explorers Who Shaped Our Gardens and Our Medicine

Most of the plants, flowers, herbs, vegetables, and trees in our gardens and parks today are not native to the area. Most of the medicinal herbs and plants we are accustomed to seeing in our teas and supplements are also not native species to the US or even Europe, but instead are sourced from around the world. Have you ever wondered how these plants were discovered and how they became part of our everyday lives? It’s all thanks to PLANT HUNTERS. 

Plant hunters are the influential explorers that most people have never heard of. Imagine an explorer not with a compass but with a shovel; not hunting for gold but for seeds, plants, and trees. The Indiana Jones’ of botany. Risking their lives to collect beautiful flowers, majestic trees, prized medicinal plants, seeds, and even drawings of these botanicals. For centuries, “plant hunters” traveled through mountains, seaports, deserts, remote villages, and even islands to find and transport plant species across the world—ornamental and medicinal alike. Their legacy can be found in gardens around the world, in our food, tea, natural medicine, and in our modern pharmaceuticals. 

In the early days of exploration, European sailors and settlers stumbled upon new plants like potatoes and tomatoes almost by accident—the unexpected side effects of charting new lands or engaging in cultural exchange. Yet, discovering new plants was rarely the goal; plants or seeds were merely curiosities gathered along the way. It wasn’t until later that expeditions were organized with the explicit mission of discovering new plants, flowers, trees, and ultimately, the medicinal species that would shape science and healthcare for centuries.

The Growth of Professional Plant Collectors

The earliest recorded plant-hunting expedition was instigated by the pharaoh Hatshepsut in 1500 BC, and it successfully relocated several frankincense trees from the African Land of Punt to the queen’s funerary garden (a garden by her tomb). Stone carvings (see below) show how the highly prized specimens were transported, root ball and all, to their new home in Egypt.

For thousands of years,  humans have saved seeds, planted trees and plants near their homes. Archaeologists have discovered that pre-Columbian people began domesticating plants and trees (Palms and Brazilian nut trees) on the edges of the vast Amazonian forests at least 8000 years ago, and their descendants continue to cultivate many of these species today. It’s clear that humans have been moving, planting, and cultivating plants and trees for thousands of years, but this activity was initially localized.

However, by the late 1700s, during the height of the Victorian garden era, plant hunting hardened into a profession in the United Kingdom. Governments, churches, and the wealthy would hire plant hunters to bring back beautiful plants, trees, and seeds to grow in their own gardens. During this time, the focus was mainly on collecting exotic plants and trees for their beauty alone. 

Sir Joseph Banks, fresh from Captain Cook’s voyage, helped turn Kew Gardens (England's royal family’s private garden at the time) into a global exchange, dispatching collectors like Francis Masson, who battled shipwrecks and imprisonment yet shipped hundreds of species, including South Africa’s Bird of Paradise flower, back to Europe. Scottish-born, David Douglas explored Hawaii and America’s Pacific coast extensively and introduced over 240 flowers and trees to the UK from these areas. His most notable discovery is the Douglas-fir (which bears his name), a tree native to America’s Pacific Northwest, but today is widely grown throughout the UK. 

And Ernest Henry “Chinese” Wilson, who introduced a thousand species to Western cultivation from China. He famously splinted a crushed leg with his camera tripod after an avalanche in China—giving rise to the so-called “Lily limp” that entered horticultural lore. Called that because this is when he discovered the Lily flower. (See photo below: Wilson on right in China 1908) 

These plant hunters—equal parts scientists, cultural negotiators, and explorers—reshaped what was growing then and now in botanical and backyard gardens from California to the UK. However, botanical and flower gardens that celebrated the beauty of plants and trees were a more recent practice. Humans have had a much longer relationship with plants, hunting them for centuries to help us heal, provide food, color our clothes and art, and even support our daily lives. 

Our Long Relationship With Plants

For thousands of years, humans relied on wild-harvested plants to soothe fevers, heal wounds, and ease aches. This is an instinct shared even with our primate relatives, who have been documented using plants to heal injuries and illnesses of fellow primates. Ancient societies like the Sumerians, Egyptians, and Greeks compiled clay tablets and papyrus scrolls filled with recipes using aloe, garlic, myrrh, and poppy.

The De Materia Medica—Latin for “On Medical Material”—is a text written over 2000 years ago by Pedanius Dioscorides (c. 40–90 CE), a Greek physician and medical botanist who served in the Roman army. Spanning five volumes, it documents approximately 600 plants and their use in over 1,000 traditional remedies. Long after its creation, Dioscorides’ work remained the most influential herbal reference, forming the foundation of the European and Western pharmacopeia for centuries. (See photo below of a copy of Materia Medica from 1500)

Many of the “discoveries” credited to European plant hunters were, in truth, ancient knowledge in Indigenous traditions. Systems like Ayurveda in India, Traditional Chinese Medicine, Amazonian shamanic practices, or traditions from local indigenous people that had already cataloged and applied plants for healing with remarkable sophistication. What Western science often presented as breakthroughs were, in many cases, rediscoveries of remedies that had been long practiced and refined by the cultures that first developed them.

Medicinal Gardeners

The human history of medicinal plants began with wild harvesting, followed by seed collecting, which then prompted the “intentional” cultivation of these plants. The “physic garden” was the name of the early European medicinal herb garden, first cultivated in monasteries and large estates as far back as the year 800. These gardens, known as hortus medicus, were living pharmacies where monks and later physicians cultivated plants to heal the sick and teach the art of medicinal botany. The Vatican still has its physic garden, which was established in the 13th century. Most physic gardens were laid out in a specific way, based on three primary functions: medicinal, culinary (also known as kitchen gardens), and dyeing for coloring clothes or artwork. By the Renaissance, they evolved into academic sites, such as the gardens at Padua, Pisa, Oxford, and Chelsea, laying the groundwork for both modern botanical gardens and the pharmaceutical sciences. Today, physic gardens stand as reminders that much of medicine began with simple plants—lavender, mint, foxglove, chamomile—tended in carefully designed gardens. 

Medicinal Plant Hunting 

As ornamental plant hunting continued to rise, interest in medicinal plant hunting also began to emerge. In the Andes, indigenous knowledge of cinchona bark led to the discovery of quinine, the first effective antimalarial known to the West. In the mid-1800s, Richard Spruce (pictured below) was sent to collect cinchona seed and saplings so the British could cultivate the remedy abroad. While Charles Ledger—relying on the expertise of his South American Quechua collaborator, Manuel Incra Mamani—secured seeds from trees unusually rich in quinine. Ledger worked with the Dutch and the India government, which established plantations in India and Java, and dominated the quinine trade for decades.

How America Started Its Own Plant Hunting 

The first large wave of plant transfers to North America wasn’t by professionals—it was by settlers focused on survival. Early European settlers transported herb seeds and starter plants in ship holds—mint, lavender, chamomile, thyme, and yarrow—to recreate “physic gardens” in their new homes, providing remedies and flavor in an unfamiliar landscape. Early settlers also learned from Native American tribes about local plants that could help with illnesses, as well as harvest practices that helped sustain their habitats. Seeds were also brought to America during the slave trade (1600-1900s), West African slaves brought Okra, black-eyed peas, and Kola nut seeds, typically collected from the food they ate on the ship.

Eventually, hospitals and towns created their own “physic gardens”. The first American town physic garden was established in Savannah, Georgia, in 1732. Philadelphia’s Pennsylvania Hospital (founded by Benjamin Franklin) still keeps their physic garden as a living ledger of 18th-century medicinal plants (foxglove, parsley, chamomile, and ginger). 

In the late 1800’s the North American medicinal plant business also boomed. Shaker communities (A branch of the Quakers from England) became major suppliers of medicinal herbs in the 19th century, cultivating, wild-harvesting, drying, cataloging, and mailing herbs nationwide. Their seed and herb businesses professionalized quality control, packaging, and distribution—our modern herbal industry owes them more than a footnote. 

Plant Hunting Wasn’t Just for Men

Ynés Mexía (pictured below) was one of the most prolific and daring plant hunters of the 20th century, collecting more than 150,000 specimens and discovering over 500 new species—including an entirely new plant genus. She didn’t start her impressive plant-hunting career until her mid-50s (around 1925). Born in Washington, D.C., to a Mexican diplomat, she began her botanical career later in life after joining California nature groups, quickly earning the trust of major scientific institutions. Her expeditions took her through Mexico, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Brazil, and even Alaska, often traveling alone by canoe or on foot into remote regions few outsiders had ever explored. Her legendary 2,400-mile journey down the Amazon stands as a testament to her grit and curiosity, cementing her legacy as one of history’s greatest plant explorers.

In 1766, Jeanne Baret became the first woman to circumnavigate the globe, disguising herself as a man to join Louis Antoine de Bougainville’s plant expedition; along the way, she helped collect thousands of plant specimens, including Bougainvillea, while navigating the dangers of life at sea…secretly hiding that she was a woman. Marian Muriel Whiting, a British botanist in the early 20th century, ventured through southern China, gathering over 600 specimens that enriched Kew Gardens’ collections—a remarkable feat for a woman traveling and collecting plants mostly alone, in colonial-era Asia. Meanwhile, Alice Eastwood led her own expeditions across North America and Mexico, rescued nearly 1,500 invaluable specimens from the California Academy of Sciences during the fires of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, and published over 300 scientific papers, reshaping botanical curation. 

Each of these women carved extraordinary paths in a field dominated by men, often overcoming social restrictions, physical danger, and institutional barriers to leave lasting scientific legacies.

Modern Plant Hunters: Carrying On The Traditions

In the 20th century, Richard Evans Schultes—“father of modern ethnobotany”—lived among Indigenous communities in Amazonia, documenting medicinal plants. (Pictured below with Amazon tribe, 1941.) Schultes’ students and intellectual heirs carried on his legacy, among them Mark Plotkin, whose Tales of a Shaman’s Apprentice helped popularize the idea that the world’s “green libraries” hold medicines we’ve barely begun to read. Today, Plotkin is the co-founder and president of the Amazon Conservation Team, which works in partnership with indigenous communities to preserve both biodiversity and traditional medical knowledge across Amazonia. 

21st Century Plant Hunting

Just as Schultes ventured deep into uncharted rainforests in search of nature’s hidden remedies, another modern-day plant hunter, Christian Drapeau (pictured below, on the left), followed a similar call—one fueled by curiosity and guided by science. His explorations over the past two decades have taken him from ancient healing traditions to the cutting edge of stem cell research, where he continues the timeless quest to uncover how the natural world supports the body’s own healing power. 

For over 20 years, Drapeau has been exploring the healing qualities of plants from around the world. His curiosity began in Montreal, Canada, in his teens, where he started researching the benefits of using herbs, essential oils, and plant extracts in teas and topical skin treatments. He even created his own tea and skin formulations, which he shared with friends and their mothers. 

In college, he studied neuroscience at McGill University's Montreal Neurological Institute. After college, he was hired to study the effects of plants on the brain. As his research expanded, he traveled to Peru to help identify medicinal plants and met with local shamans. When Drapeau asked one shaman how his people discovered the healing attributes of plants, the shaman responded, “The plants tell us”, illustrating that the process of plant hunting goes beyond what we can see or even explain. 

Drapeau also explored Madagascar and worked with locals to learn about their over 118 unique Aloe plants. While there, he discovered a unique species of aloe, called Vahona by the local natives, which Malagasy healers have long used. He also traveled to China and the high-altitude Tibetan Plateau, working with locals to explore the plants they had wild-harvested and used for generations, such as Seabuckthorn Berry. 

Discovering Plants That Support Our Stem Cells 

Driven by insatiable curiosity, plant hunter Drapeau followed his fascination with medicinal plants straight into the world of stem cell science—where he’s now recognized as a leading stem cell researcher exploring how natural plant extracts can enhance the body’s own stem cells. 

Through his work, Drapeau discovered that as we age, the number of circulating stem cells in the body declines—and since these cells form the body’s innate repair system, that decline leads to slower healing, reduced recovery, and diminished vitality overall. His research revealed that when people can naturally increase their circulating stem cells—without injections or invasive procedures—the body’s repair system becomes more efficient, supporting faster recovery and slowing the aging process. This discovery has shaped Drapeau’s life’s work: uncovering and optimizing plant-based compounds that activate this natural repair system. 

Why Drapeau chose to be a plant hunter and a researcher

Drapeau chose to do the plant hunting himself because he was guided by a scientist’s conviction that secondhand information is never enough. He believed that proper research and understanding—and often genuine discovery—can only come from going directly to where the plants grow and speaking with the people who have relied on them for generations.

Through this process, he has found the biochemical differences in these plants based on where they are grown, when & how they are harvested, and how they are processed. Then he has taken his research one step further by studying each plant to determine which has the greatest effect on stem cell mobilization. His research has been published in 29 scientific publications.

Drapeau’s research and plant-hunting demonstrate that, despite advances in modern and natural medicine, there are still frontiers waiting to be discovered. His research into stem cell-supporting plants opens one of those frontiers, challenging us to rethink what’s possible in enhancing our own aging, recovery, and long-term vitality.

Why Plant Hunters Matter

Walk any botanical garden and you’re strolling a museum of expeditions: Douglas-firs that once shaded Pacific Northwest rivers; regal lilies that nearly broke a collector’s leg to make it to England’s greenhouses. But look closer and you’ll also see a dispensary: with willow bark came aspirin, from foxglove the heart medicine digitalis, from the poppy came morphine, and from cinchona bark the lifesaving antimalarial quinine—plants that transformed from traditional remedies into cornerstones of modern pharmacology. These breakthroughs reveal a direct connection between the use of ancient plants and today’s most trusted medicines, demonstrating how nature’s pharmacy continues to influence human health.  We inherited all of these advancements from seed-bearing settlers, Indigenous teachers, plant hunters, shaker merchants, and rainforest ethnobotanists — and from today’s careful experimenters who test old lore with new tools.

The stakes have only grown. With nearly half of flowering plants at risk, tomorrow’s latest cure or natural herb to support human biology may be living on a hillside we’ve yet to survey, but is in danger of being destroyed. Botanical conservation is not just about beauty; it’s medicine for future humans. To ensure the future success of plant medicine, we must support our local herbarium, botanical garden, and the researchers dedicated to studying medicinal plants. While also championing seed-banking and ethical plant hunting (now called bioprospecting). 

Today, the plant hunt continues with headlamps and mobile flow cytometers. Seed-banking programs, such as Kew’s Millennium Seed Bank, act as a global safety deposit box for wild flora—tens of thousands of species from 190 countries, stored against catastrophe. At the same time, botanic gardens warn that space for living conservation collections is running short, even as extinction risk accelerates. The old romance—“send more seeds!”—has become an engineering problem: which species, stored how, where, with what rights and returns for source communities? It’s clear that plant hunting remains necessary, but it is also a complex process.

And of course, we need to pay our most profound respect to the indigenous communities whose knowledge shortens our searches because the next great plant hunter might be a seed-collector in Kyrgyzstan, a village healer in Madagascar, or a scientist with a backpack and a handheld centrifuge—each of them working the world’s green library before the pages go missing. 

The Future of Plant Hunters

From ancient empires and Victorian expeditions to brave women and modern bioprospectors, plant hunters have rewritten the story of what we grow, the plants we eat, what we heal with, and how we see the natural world. Their legacy reminds us that medicine and gardening are not just something we manufacture in a lab—but something we rediscover in remote mountains, through tribal shaman, and in the chemistry of plants themselves. The bridge between ancient plant knowledge and modern science is not just nostalgic—it’s a frontier. And though centuries have passed since those first expeditions, the adventure continues—because the next great discovery might still be growing, unseen, in some forgotten corner of our planet. 

The legacy of plant hunters is one of exploration, discovery, and respect—a reminder that knowledge is everywhere, if we’re humble enough to search for it and “open” enough to learn from it. And while the tools have changed, the mission remains the same: to uncover nature’s secrets and honor the intelligence woven through every living thing.

Learn more about the science behind STEMREGEN®, and how the natural plant products support stem cells and your body’s innate repair system.