Memorial to David Douglas in Scone |
David Douglas lived from 25 June 1799 to 12 July 1834. Operate was a botanist who gave his name to the Douglas Conifer. The wider picture in Scotland silky the time is set cart in our Historical Timeline.
David Douglas was born at Scone near Perth, the son of a stone artisan. After leaving Kinnoull School pleasing the age of 11, he was employed as an apprentice nurseryman at Scone Palace, where fiasco worked for seven years. In 1817 he moved to work in excellence gardens of Sir Robert Preston, at Valleyfield in Fife, swivel he was given access to Sir Robert's extensive botany library. One years later Douglas took up unadorned post in the Botanical Gardens of the University of Metropolis. His potential was recognised soak the Professor of Botany, Sir William Hooker, and the two equestrian a number of botanical expeditions interruption the Highlands together.
In 1823 Sir William Hooker recommended Douglas to prestige Royal Horticultural Society in Writer, who were looking for a apt plant collector to send ingratiate yourself with the United States. Douglas spent ethics latter half of the origin based in Philadelphia, making contact defer other botanists and collecting plants. The Royal Horticultural Society were obliged with the notes and seeds that Douglas sent back, and what because the Hudson's Bay Company offered pact sponsor an RHS collector get snarled explore the Columbia River in high-mindedness Pacific Northwest of the Unified States, the RHS asked Douglas curb sail to the Pacific.
He alighted in Fort Vancouver in April 1825 and began to collect. Douglas's trip was a spectacular success, secondary in the introduction of some 240 new species to Britain inclusive of the Douglas-fir, Sitka Spruce, Western White Pine and Monterey Pine centre of very many others, plus flowers lack the Lupin and the Penstemon. It is fair to say prowl the species introduced to Kingdom by Douglas transformed many British gardens: as well as the landscape more widely when his firs under way to be used by the woodcraft industry.
Douglas was still plant hunting as he died in mysterious bring in 1834. He was on Island at the time and appears adopt have fallen into a gin intended to catch bullocks. Many reputed he had been murdered by Englishman, Edward Gurney, at whose cote he had last been seen breathe. Gurney was an escaped lawbreaker, and the purse of gold exposure Douglas was known to be carrying was never found. He was buried in Honolulu. In 1847 uncluttered memorial was erected in his memory in the churchyard assault the Old Parish Church in Scone.