Rose and peony Discoverer  

Listing last updated on Wed Aug 2024

United Kingdom

David Douglas (June 25, 1799 scone near Perth, Scotland - July 12, 1834 Hawaii), Scottish gardener, botanist and plant Explorer.

[From Transactions of the Horticultural Society of London, Second Series, 1842, p.375ff:] In the year 1830 the late Mr. David Douglas, who had already as collector of the Society enriched the country with so many valuable productions of N.W. America, was again absent on a similar mission to the same district, and, in the course of an expedition into Upper California from December 1830 till the summer of 1832, he made collections of trees, shrubs and ornamental plants of no less importance than those which he had formerly transmitted. From thence his instructions directed him to return to the N.W. Coast, and to further explore the rich western declivities of the Rocky Mountains, but on his arrival at the Sandwich Islands on his way back to the Columbia, he received intelligence that his friend, Mr. Sabine, had resigned the office of Secretary, in consequence of which he was induced by some misconception to resign his own appointment of Collector. And although he did subsequently proceed to the Columbia with the intention of transmitting seeds, &c. to the Society, which the Council would have liberally acknowledged,* yet owing to the unfortunate circumstances that attended his death two years afterwards in the Sandwich Islands, when on his return home, whatever he may have then collected has been lost, and the Californian seeds were the last re- ceived from him. All that is known of the last years of his life and of his untimely end has been published by Sir William Hooker, in the 2nd Vol. of the Companion to the Botanical Magazine.