One River also includes details of the search for and discovery of rubber in the Amazon-said to be one of the greatest breakthroughs in the histrory of cultivated plants. Brazil was the original home of the rubber trees that now adorn hundreds of thousands of acres of Asian soil that was once rainforest.As a result of the so-called 'theft' of many thousands of seeds from the rainforests of Brazil, which were collected by British botanical adventurers,the Brazilian rubber wealth declined drastically as commercial plantations developed more successfully in Asia.