You know the old nursery rhyme:

Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.
A peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked.
If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,
Where’s the peck of pickled peppers that Peter Piper picked?

Apparently the real “Peter Piper” was a horticulturist, missionary and colonial administrator by the name of Peter Poivre. In the 1760s he was the colonial administrator on the island of Mauritius. It was there that he established a botanical garden where he grew trees, shrubs and plants from all over the tropics. He supposedly smuggled clove and nutmeg out of the Spice Islands, which at the time were controlled by the Dutch East India Company, and thus broke their monopoly. To this day his 25-hectare garden still exists in northern Mauritious and is called the “Botanical Garden of Pamplemousses”.

I learned about this fact from: Globe Trekker – The Story of Spice which aired on WNED Sunday July 21st 2013