New book reveals that Pacific islands inhabitants helped European scientists identify hundreds of plant species

In 1769, nearly nine months after setting sail with Capt James Cook on his first voyage to the Pacific, Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander ­disembarked from HMS Endeavour and made history as the first European botanists to explore the island of Tahiti.

Once on land, they faced a mammoth task: how to describe and name, for the benefit of other European naturalists, the hundreds of plants they were encountering for the first time.