134 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



21. David Douglas. 



By F. R. S. Balfour. 



There is no botanist whose name should be more familiar to 

 Scotsmen than that of David Douglas, associated as it is with 

 the tree we all plant nowadays and know so well. Indeed it is 

 no exaggeration to say that his introductions have furnished our 

 woods and gardens, in Scotland at least, with most of the exotic 

 trees and shrubs now in general cultivation, all of them brought 

 from the North Pacific Coast where the conditions of climate are 

 so like our own. To mention merely a few of the splendid 

 conifers of that region which he introduced — Tsuga Albertiana, 

 Picea Sitchensis, Abies nobilis, Abies grafidis, Abies magnifica, 

 Abies amabilis, Pinus poiiderosa, Pinus monticola, Pinus Sabiniana, 

 Pinits Coulteri, Pi?ii/s insignis, and that king of conifers Pinus 

 Lambertiana, are perhaps those most familiar to us ; and we 

 can hardly imagine our shrubberies bereft of such plants as 

 Ribes sangnineufn, Berberis aquifolium, Spiraea ariaefolia and 

 Gaultheria Shallon. It is curious that Berberis nervosa^ so 

 common on the banks of the Columbia, greatly preferred by 

 Douglas to Berberis aquifoliuni, and introduced by him at the 

 same time, is now one of the rarest shrubs in cultivation : the 

 writer found it once at Traquair, where perhaps it has grown 

 unnoticed with its commoner neighbour ever since Douglas' 

 time. 



David Douglas was born at Scone in 1798, and worked as a 

 gardener for seven years on Lord Mansfield's estate, where many 

 fine specimens of his trees can now be seen. 



The Royal Horticultural Society, through the editorship of 

 their secretary, the Rev. W. Wilks, assisted by Mr H. R. 

 Hutchinson, have published the journals in which Douglas 

 recorded his experiences from day to day during the expeditions 

 made on behalf of that Society, first to Eastern America in 1823, 

 and secondly from 1825-1827 in the country we now call Oregon 

 and Washington, and during his long journey home across the 

 Continent to Hudson Bay. The book ^ also includes a list of the 

 plants introduced by him. 



It is sad that we cannot also see his journals during the 



^ Journal kept by David Douglas during his Travels in North America, 

 iS2^-2j. London : W. Wesley & Son, 1914. Trice 21s. net. 



