Back in the Day: Botanist who changed the face of Scotland

Thomas Telford with his roads, bridges and canals, above all the Caledonian Canal; John Loudon McAdam with his roads; General Wade with his roads and bridges; the Stevenson family with their lighthouses; James Barron and his harbours; and countless canal, road, railway and bridge builders.

Yet arguably the one man who changed Scotland’s topography most was not an engineer but a 19th-century botanist, David Douglas. For it was Douglas who introduced dozens of species of trees and plants into Scotland including that garden staple, the lupin, and most famous tree named after him, the Douglas fir. His greatest “import”, however, was the Sitka spruce, which has become the most planted tree in Scotland and accounts for almost half of the nation’s forests covering thousands of acres right across t

he land.

Fast-growing and able to thrive in Scotland’s rainy climate, the Sitka spruce is not always the most popular tree among Scottish dendrophiles, as it is often seen as non-native, even invasive, and utilitarian – it is planted almost exclusively to make money, and it’s nowhere near as pretty as our native deciduous species and the Scots pine. It is, however, a major driver of the rural economy and for its introduction to Scotland in the 19th century we must thank David Douglas.

A man with an extraordinary life story considering he died at the age of just 35, Douglas suffers by comparison with John Muir, who in my far-from-humble opinion was the greatest naturalist ever produced by Scotland and the UK, and who changed the face of North America with his pleas for the preservation of wildernesses which created the national parks.

Comparisons should not really be made, however, because although Muir’s most famous works were achieved in the USA, it was Douglas’s effect on gardens, orchards, landscapes and treescapes here in the UK and in other countries which are his legacy.

David Douglas was born the son of John Douglas, a stonemason, and Jean (nee Drummond), on June 25, 1799, in Scone village, north of Perth, near the site of the crowning stone of Kings of Scots for centuries. He was given the normal parish education before attending Kinnoull School.

After leaving school he was apprenticed to William Beattie, the head gardener at the magnificent estate of the Earl of Mansfield at Scone Palace. Douglas completed his apprenticeship and in total spent seven years at the palace, before studying plant culture and botany at a college in Perth – it was here that he began to study the scientific aspects of horticulture.

In 1817, he went to Fife to work at Valleyfield House, home of Sir Robert Preston, who gave him wide access to his library of botanical books. Douglas then moved to the Botanical Gardens of Glasgow University and attended botany lectures. Professor William Jackson Hooker was director of the garden and professor of botany, and he was so impressed with Douglas that he asked his student to accompany him on plant-finding and classification expeditions across the Highlands.

Upon completion of his studies, Douglas went to London and was recommended by Hooker to the Royal Horticultural Society, which was then in the midst of funding expeditions across the globe to find new plant and tree species. In particular, they were seeking someone to find and classify trees and plants in the USA, less than eight years after the conclusion of the last war between Britain and America. In his “Journal kept by David Douglas during his Travels in North America, 1823-27” Douglas describes in vivid and exhaustive detail his three expeditions to the USA and extensive journeys around that country.

He was just 24 when he arrived in New York, a city full of gardens which greatly impressed him, though he did record that one of his fellow passengers suffered the loss of his £200 horse when it died just as their ship was nearing the port.

He was soon about his business as a collector of plants and seeds, and he recorded journeys up state to Albany and Buffalo and other towns and villages, never failing to mention kindnesses done to him by the colonials, as most Britons still thought of Americans, though he wrote of having his coat stolen by “a Virginian” as if that explained everything.

He forayed briefly into Canada and west to Lake Erie, and on the way back stopped at the Niagara Falls, all the time collecting seeds and cuttings. More importantly, he gleaned information from gardeners and botanists indicating that there was massive potential for plant and tree finds across the country.

That first trip lasted until late into the year, and on his return to London in January, 1824, the Royal Horticultural Society’s senior members were ecstatic at the rewards they had reaped for their investment in the young Scot. He told them that there was so much more to find and so they sent Douglas to the USA for a second trip, this time to the Pacific North West area of the country.

This trip saw him arrive at Fort Vancouver in April, 1825, and his subsequent activities in what are now Oregon and Washington states made his name as a botanist and explorer supreme, not least because during it he climbed Mount Brown and is thus acclaimed as the first mountaineer in the USA.

Travelling all around the region, Douglas found new – to European eyes – species of pine, at least a dozen of them. He took cuttings of the Douglas fir, which is not actually a fir, and was originally named after another Scottish arboriculturalist, Archibald Menzies who discovered the tree in 1791.

ALONG the way he encountered native Americans and though he feared attack, he persuaded them to help in his discoveries. He wrote a classic description of tracking down the Sugar pine, which features in Rosemary Goring’s splendid Autobiography of Scotland.

“About an hour’s walk from my camp I was met by an Indian, who on discovering me strung his bow and placed on his left arm a sleeve of raccoon-skin and stood ready on the defence. As I was well convinced this was prompted through fear, he never before having seen such a being, I laid my gun at my feet on the ground and waved my hand for him to come to me, which he did with great caution. I made him place his bow and quiver beside my gun, and then struck a light and gave him to smoke and a few beads.

“With my pencil I made a rough sketch of the cone and pine I wanted and showed him it, when he instantly pointed to the hills about fifteen or twenty miles to the south. As I wanted to go in that direction, he seemingly with much good-will went with me. At midday I reached my long-wished Pinus (called by the Umpqua tribe Natele), and lost no time in examining and endeavouring to collect specimens and seeds.

“New or strange things seldom fail to make great impressions, and often at first we are liable to over-rate them; and lest I should never see my friends to tell them verbally of this most beautiful and immensely large tree, I now state the dimensions of the largest one I could find that was blown down by the wind: Three feet from the ground, 57 feet 9 inches in circumference; 134 feet from the ground, 17 feet 5 inches; extreme length, 215 feet. The trees are remarkably straight; bark uncommonly smooth for such large timber, of a whitish or light brown colour; and yields a great quantity of gum of a bright amber colour.

“The large trees are destitute of branches, generally for two-thirds the length of the tree; branches pendulous, and the cones hanging from their points like small sugar-loaves in a grocer’s shop, it being only on the very largest trees that cones are seen, and the putting myself in possession of three cones (all I could) nearly brought my life to an end.

“Being unable to climb or hew down any, I took my gun and was busy clipping them from the branches with ball when eight Indians came at the report of my gun. They were all painted with red earth, armed with bows, arrows, spears of bone, and flint knives, and seemed to me anything but friendly. I endeavoured to explain to them what I wanted and they seemed satisfied and sat down to smoke, but had no sooner done so than I perceived one string his bow and another sharpen his flint knife with a pair of wooden pincers and hang it on the wrist of the right hand, which gave me ample testimony of their inclination.”

“To save myself I could not do by flight, and without any hesitation I went backwards six paces and cocked my gun, and then pulled from my belt one of my pistols, which I held in my left hand. I was determined to fight for life. As I as much as possible endeavoured to preserve my coolness and perhaps did so, I stood eight or ten minutes looking at them and they at me without a word passing, till one at last, who seemed to be the leader, made a sign for tobacco, which I said they should get on condition of going and fetching me some cones. They went, and soon as out of sight I picked up my three cones and a few twigs, and made a quick retreat to my camp, which I gained at dusk.”

The Sugar pine joined the almost 240 species of plant and tree introduced into Britain by Douglas. Mainly from the Royal Horticultural Society, these new species spread across Europe and the Empire. The Western white pine and Monterey pine, the Noble fir and Grand fir, plus flowers like the Lupin, the Penstemon, and the Flowering Currant all became very popular.

HIS second tour was not always a success. He wrote in a letter to his old teacher Professor William Hooker in Glasgow that “the season was unkind, very rainy, and being just the conclusion of winter I could only obtain Ferns and Mosses. I am mightily desirous to have material for a Flora of that group”.

Douglas was widely acclaimed for his feats on his return to London and a third trip was planned, this time via Hawaii. He developed a liking for the islands and returned there three years later having enjoyed lesser success on his third trip to the USA, so much so that he parted company with the Society and went freelance, again with no great success. Months after his return to Hawaii he met his death on July 12, 1834, falling into a pit designed to trap wild cattle and having a bullock topple in on him.

Mystery still surrounds his death – or was it murder? For he had been staying with a former convict, Ned Gurney, and rumours circulated that Douglas and Mrs Gurney had gotten too close for Mr Gurney’s liking.

Local clergyman the Rev Titus Coan officiated at Douglas’s funeral. His son, also called Titus, wrote in 1920: “Ned Gurney ... killed him with an axe, took gold and gave out that he had found Douglas’s body under the hoofs of a bull in a pit; and for 60 years most people believed that a skilled mountaineer had walked into a trap! ... But my father, among others, knew from the first who had committed the murder and Gurney raved about it on his deathbed.” To be fair, Emma Lyons Doyle, who heard an eye-witness account of Gurney’s death wrote that “he kept repeating in his delirium, ‘I didn’t do it! No! I didn’t kill him!’”

David Douglas is commemorated by a burial stone in Hawaii, a memorial in Scone, and schools and parks are named after him in Oregon and Washington states.