Date of Birth - 1798

Started as a gardener’s boy at Scone Palace for the Earl of Mansfield then to Sir Robert Preston at Valley Field in Fife to a garden noted for it’s exotics. Proved his potential and was allowed the use of an extensive botanical library. Went on to work under William Hooker at Glasgow Botanic Garden assisting with the collection of Scottish plants.

In 1823 he was taken on by the Horticultural Society of London to go to China but the country was unsettled so he went to the US - particularly for fruit trees. He was the first plant hunter to work in a temperate climate - his brief was to collect plants not in cultivation or not described. In June 1823 he left for the east coast of America. It was September when he first set foot into a forest and was amazed by the American natural scenery. Went to see Niagara Falls ‘ I am like most who have seen them, sensitively impressed with their grandeur but particularly with a red cedar which grew out of the rocks on the channel of the river”. By December he was ready for home and returned with his collection of fruit trees, oaks and other plants in the nurseries of New York and Philadelphia.

His next mission in 1824 was to the Pacific coast of North America. The ship stopped at Madeira, in August then Rio in September round by Cape Horn, stopping at Juan Fernandez and the Galapagos Islands taking 8 months in all. He later had problems drying specimens when it rained constantly - lost 45 bird specimens. On the 7th April they arrived at the Columbia River - ‘his highway to the floral wealth of N.W. America’. First plant he noted was Gaultheria shallon . He explored further up the river by birch bark canoe manned by native Americans. His first summer was spent exploring lower Columbia where he made trips to the Grand Rapids in the Cascade Mountains covering two thousand miles in his first season before returning to Fort Vancouver in September.

Douglas was able to send back nearly 500 plants, seeds, letters, journals and skins of birds and animals. In 1827 he began to travel east and by April he started to cross the Rockies by foot during this time he met Thomas Drummond, who had been with Sir John Franklin's Arctic expedition - Drummond ended up looking after a box of Douglas’ herbarium specimens for a time. Eventually Douglas and Drummond sailed back together in same ship from Hudson Bay. Botanical circles were amazed by the number and importance of his discoveries. Many familiar plants today were brought by him into general cultivation - Cornus alba, Mahonia aquifolium, Mimulus moschatus, Lupinus polyphyllus, Eschscholzia californica, the “Douglas Fir” Pseudotsuga menziesii - one of his introductions which alone was then considered to be well worth the entire cost of the expedition, at that time less than £400 a small fortune.

He left again in 1830-32 for an exploration of California - even though by now seeds from any accessible country could be obtained by correspondence. He came across the ‘Giant Redwood’ Sequoia sempervirens and was the first botanist to describe them, although it was discovered by Archibald Menzies some years before. Eventually he returned to the Columbia River and following this he was given the opportunity to return home via Russia, however he opted to return to the Fraser River where he almost drowned and lost all his belongings and collections. In August 1833 went to the Hawaiian Islands and sent home his California collection - 670 species many of them new. By late December he arrived in Hawaii, only six months later he died in a pit trap. His plant collections, conifers in particular would alter the landscape and gardens of this country for ever. As specimen trees, shelter belts and copses.

Countries visited: USA, Portugal, Hawaii, Galapagos.

Awards: ALS 1824, FLS 1828

David Douglas Main Plant Introductions:
He introduced over 200 new species, including, Pseudotsuga menziesii (Douglas Fir), Abies nobilis (Noble Fir), Abies grandis (Grand Fir), Acer microphyllum ( Maple), Acer circinatum, Lonicera ciliosa ( Honeysuckle), Picea sitchensis (Sitka spruce).

• Abies amabilis
• Abies grandis
• Abies nobilis
• Abies procera
• Acer circinatum
• Acer macrophyllum
• Amelanchier alnifolia var. semiintegrifolia
• Arbutus menziesii
• Calycanthus occidentalis
• Castanopsis crysophylla
• Garrya elliptica
• Gaultheria elliptica
• Gaultheria shallon
• Holodiscus discolor
• Larix occidetalis
• Lonicera ciliosa