This, said Fitcher, was a Chinese gardening method that he had popularized in Britain with great profit to himself: ducking into his cabin, he emerged with a piece of equipment that he had designed and marketed as the ‘Penrose Propagation Pot’. It was about the size of a watering-can, except that it had a slit down the side to accommodate a tree-shoot. Facing the slit was a small hoop with which the pot could be affixed to a branch: it was the perfect implement for allowing a shoot to develop roots without planting it in the earth.

‘Wouldn’t never have thought of it if I hadn’t of see’d it in China.’

These stories amazed Paulette. Fitcher was so unlike the plant collectors of her imagination, so peculiar in his appearance and mannerisms, that it was hard to imagine him as an intrepid traveller. But Paulette knew, from her father’s accounts, that even Humboldt, the greatest collector of all, was utterly unlike his legend – stout, dapper, and so much the boulevardier that people who sought him out often thought they had encountered an impostor. Not that Fitcher was an explorer of the same ilk – but the Redruth’s assemblage of plants and equipment was ample proof of his seriousness, his competence, and indeed, his passion.

‘Pray sir,’ she said one day, ‘may I ask what it was that first took you to China?’

‘That ee may,’ said Fitcher, with a twitch of his eyebrows. ‘And I’ll answer as best I can. It came about while I was sailing for a living, on a Cornish fruit-schooner …’

One summer, when the schooner was in London for a few days, it came to Fitcher’s ears that a certain Gent had made it known that he was looking for sailors who had some experience of dealing with plants. On making further inquiries, he was astonished to learn that the man in question was none other than Sir Joseph Banks, the Curator of the King’s Garden at Kew.

‘Sir Joseph Banks?’ cried Paulette. ‘Why sir, do you mean he who first described the flora of Australia?’

‘Exactly.’

Fitcher had not neglected his scientific interests during his years at sea: the leisure hours that other sailors spent in smoking, gossiping and catchum-killala, he had devoted to reading and self-instruction. He did not need to be told that Sir Joseph had served as the naturalist for Captain Cook’s first voyage, or that he was the President of the Royal Society, from which post he reigned unchallenged over a veritable empire of scientific institutions.

Such indeed was Fitcher’s awe of the Curator that his first encounter with him got off to an unfortunate start. Sir Joseph was as grand a gent as ever he had set eyes on, dressed to death, from the powdered curls of his wig to the polished heel of his shoe. On being shown into his presence, Fitcher became acutely aware of the shortcomings of his own appearance: the patches on his jacket seemed suddenly to become more visible, as did the attack of acne that had caused his shipmates to compare his face to a pot of bubbling skillygale. He was at the best of times a shy man, and in moments of awkwardness his tongue grew so heavy that even his siblings had been known to joke that he could say neither bee nor baw without sounding awful broad.