XXXVII 

 GARRYA 



Garrya elliptica 

 Fremonti 



IT is sometimes said that the Garrya was David 

 Douglas's greatest botanical " find," no mean com- 

 pliment this, when one remembers that that most 

 indefatigable and bravest of plant collectors introduced 

 no fewer than 217 new species of plants into England. 

 It was in 1827, when Douglas was travelling in the 

 west of North America, that he first saw this beautiful 

 evergreen dripping no other word expresses it with 

 its graceful silvery catkins. He waited his time and 

 later gathered the black berries which, on some plants 

 alone, follow the catkins. These he forwarded to the 

 Horticultural Gardens at Chiswick, and in 1834 a Garrya 

 flowered in this country. Douglas himself named it 

 " Garrya " as a compliment to Nicholas Garry, who was 

 at that time Secretary to the Hudson Bay Company, 

 and to whom he owed much assistance and encourage- 

 ment in his American botanical travels. At first 

 botanists were greatly exercised about the new shrub. 

 It was supposed to represent a natural order altogether 



distinct from any previously known, but though this 

 R 261 



