8 HISTORICAL NOTES 



In the early years of the nineteenth century the most important 

 collector of woody plants was John Eraser (1752-1811). Born in the 

 county of Inverness, he came to London as a young man and ultimately 

 started in business at Chelsea as a hosier and linen-draper. Living near 

 the famous Chelsea Physic Garden, he appears to have acquired a love 

 for plants that soon set him longing for travel in search of new ones. 

 With the assistance of Sir James Smith, then a leading botanist and 

 authority on willows, and that of Aiton of Kew, he went to N. America 

 about 1780. During the next twenty years he crossed the Atlantic ten or 

 twelve times (latterly in company with his son of the same name), and 

 introduced many of the trees and shrubs now most cherished in our 

 gardens, amongst them such as the magnolias M. Fraseri was named 

 after him, azaleas, Fieri s floribunda^ and Rhododendron catawbiense, the 

 chief parent of the garden race of rhododendrons. His most successful 

 work was done in the S.E. United States. His later years were clouded 

 by ill-health and financial embarrassment, and he died at Sloane Square 

 in 1811, when only sixty years of age. Loudon describes him as one of 

 the most enterprising, indefatigable, and persevering men who ever 

 devoted themselves to botany and plant discovery. 



No single event up to the time of its occurrence can be said to have 

 exerted so stimulating an influence on the cultivation of hardy trees and 

 shrubs in our islands as the foundation of the Horticultural Society in 

 1804. In 1824 they initiated one of the most famous of plant-collecting 

 expeditions ; they sent David Douglas to western N. America, a region 

 which hitherto had only been touched at, thirty years before, by Archibald 

 Menzies, when he accompanied Vancouver on his voyage of discovery. 

 Douglas (1798-1834), like nearly all these early collectors, was of Scottish 

 descent. v Born at Scone, near Perth, he went as a youth to the Botanic 

 Garden at Glasgow, where his botanical tastes gained for him the 

 patronage of Sir Wm. Hooker, by whom he was recommended to the 

 Horticultural Society as a plant collector. He reached British Columbia 

 in April 1825, and sent home the seeds of many species during that and 

 the two following years. In 1829 he again left England and reached the 

 mouth of the Columbia River in June 1830. In this region and in 

 California he worked during the succeeding two or three years. Among 

 the most notable additions Douglas made to cultivated trees were the 

 Douglas fir, Pinus insignis^ P. Lambertiana, P. monticola, P. Sabiniana, 

 P.ponderosci) and P. Coulteri ; Abies amabilis^ A. grandis, and A. nobilis ; 

 Picea sitchensiS) Acer macrophyllum and A. circinatum. Arbutus Menziesii. 

 Among shrubs whose first sending we owe to him are Garrya 

 elliptica, Ribes aureum, R. sanguineum and R. speriosum, Rubus 

 nutkanus and R. spectabilis, Gaultheria Shallon. Douglas came to a 

 horribly tragic end on i2th July 1834. He was collecting plants alone in 



