Chris Hawes had a lively fascination for the immensely complex organisation of the endomembrane system, including the process of endocytosis. This is the method by which eukaryotic cells internalise membrane proteins, lipids, carbohydrates, and cell wall enzymes from the cell surface through membrane bound vesicles. Endocytosis occurs progressively, starting with early membrane deformation, scission, and finally the release of the vesicle into the cytoplasm. Next to secretion, endocytosis allows the cell to control the proteome composition of its inner and outer surface membrane and as such, its communication with the outside world. Whereas endocytosis was initially considered theoretically impossible in plants due to their high turgor pressure, it is now established as essential for plant life. Furthermore, endocytosis remains a highly active field of research, both in yeast, animal, and plant model systems. Over the past three decades, the tools and techniques used to visualise, quantify, and characterise endocytosis have resulted in an increasingly higher spatiotemporal understanding of this process. Here we provide a brief history of plant endocytosis research from the time when Chris Hawes was investigating the process, to the current state-of-the-art in the field. We will end this chapter with a discussion on some promising future developments for plant endocytosis research. A brief history of endocytosis in plants Chris Hawes had an intense fascination for understanding the intracellular organisation of a cell. Specifically, Chris was intrigued by the immensely complex organisation of the endomembrane system, which covers the anterograde trafficking pathways from the endoplasmic reticulum to the Golgi apparatus, to the trans-Golgi network and to the plasma membrane, as well as the retrograde transport route, which recycles material from the Golgi apparatus back to the endoplasmic reticulum. Moreover, he also studied the endocytic