"Catharanthus roseus" has been a cosmopolitan species since before the Industrial Revolution and the plant's use in folk remedies suggested general bioactivity for diabetes treatment, not cancer. In the mid-eighteenth century, botanist Judith Sumner recorded the arrival of "catharanthus roses" at London's Chelsea Physic Garden from the Jardin des plantes in Paris. It's unclear how the plant first arrived in Paris and the details of its origins in Madagascar beyond reports of its transport from Madagascar by early European explorers. Vincristine was initially distributed at cost to increase accessibility, though later switched to a for-profit model to recover the costs of production and development. According to Michael Brown, vincristine may not be a tidy example of pharmaceutical bioprospecting, but it demonstrates how pharmaceuticals with a history of use in folk medicine have intellectual property claims which are difficult to untangle.