David Douglas – Explorer and Botanist. Ann Lindsay
Mitchell and Syd House. Aurum Press,
London, 1999. pp X1V + 241.
This review was written on January 3rd 2004
In 1974 I acquired 40 acres of fairly rough farming
land as part of a summer home for my growing children. Family circumstances prevented
me from proceeding with our plans and I planted 30 acres of Sitka, Japanese
larch and Monterey pine rather than adding farming to my medical profession. This
endeavour was to prompt a great interest in trees. After my later retirement I
became active as a member of the Irish Tree Society, a representative of an
Taisce on the Irish Tree Council and, among other arboreal interests, I wrote a
book about the relationship between ivy and our hedgerow and woodland trees.
This biography was largely based on diaries and
letters Davis Douglas had sent to Britain during his various travels to the
North American continent and to Hawaii. Douglas was born in Scotland of humble
parents but was possessed of an extraordinary enquiring mind, particularly in
relation to natural history. He became one of the most famous and adventurous
of the large group of Scots who contributed so much to the exploration of the
natural world. He had an obsessive interest in plants and trees and was fortunate
to have been employed by prominent horticularists and botanists from the time
he left school.
He died tragically in 1834 at the age of 35 but during
his short life and his three visits to America he provided an enormous amount of
information about the plants and trees of the United States and the contiguous
parts of Western Canada. He contributed his findings to the Historical Society
in London which employed him during his travels. Because of his systematic and
enquiring mind and his indifference to hardship and the dangers of exploring
unknown and hostile territory, he proved to be an excellent choice by the
Society and acquired an early reputation as an explorer, traveller, botanist,
student of natural history and a diplomat and linguist who could deal with the
most hostile and isolated indigenous tribes.
 |
| Monteray Pine |
Leaving London in July 1823 he first went to New York
where he collected valuable information about the trees and plants of the area.
Having returned from New York he
put his collection of seeds and plants in order and wrote up the details of his
travels. He was then sent to the
largely unexplored west coast of North America where, after spending eight
months rounding the Horn, he landed at the mouth of the Columbia River in what
is now the State of Oregon. It was here that he accomplished his remarkable work
into the local flora. He managed to send by various routes details of his huge
collection of seeds and seedlings to London. They were based on his discoveries,
the product of which now adorn our gardens, estates and arboreta. They
include a variety of sequoias, the Monterey pine, the Sitka spruce and the
rediscovery of a few others. Another addition to fashionable tree lovers in
the 19th century, the monkey puzzle tree, was discovered by an
earlier explorer in the late 1700s in Chile.
It is difficult to understand the toleration to
hardship endured by explorers like Douglas during long sea voyages and travelling
through wild and dangerous country without any of the modern comforts and
conveniences which make travel nowadays so much easier.
 |
| A man examines white fox pelts at the Hudson's Bay Co. |
Douglas, during his first voyage to North West
America, observed at close range the appalling impact alcohol had on the
indigenous tribes of the area. Rum had become the major currency and was the
principle item which was bartered for furs. The Hudson’s Bay Company, which had
a complete monopoly of the fur trade at the time of his visits, is stated to
have used about fifty gallons of strong rum and brandy carried overland from
the East which, when diluted, made up a quarter of a million gallons for a native
population of some one hundred and twenty thousand. According to Douglas alcohol
leads to mass addiction and the destruction of families, communities and the
indigenous way of life. Many of the employees of the Company in North America
pleaded with the authorities in London to cease trading in rum but such pleas
went unheard. Later firearms were also used as barter. These proved equally
destructive to the indigenous population. There appears to be no limit to the
adverse effects which can be inspired by the profit motive and by human acquisitiveness.
Man’s inhumanity to man is ubiquitous. Worse is man’s inhumanity to Nature for
it will inevitably lead to Nemesis.
 |
| Red cedar |
Douglas is mainly remembered as being the first person
to introduce some of the great trees of North Western America to Europe They
included the Douglas and Monterey pines, Sitka spruce, the various Sequoia and
the Thuja or Red Cedar among others. Most
have thrived in the British Isles and Europe, and some such the Sitka
are now hugely important commercially and are widely grown in commercial
forests in Europe.. A few, such as the sugar pine, have been less successful,
and failed to survive the 19th century in this part of the world.
David Douglas spent about two and one half years in
North Western America during his first visit. He returned to London to fame and
claim having crossed Canada on foot or by canoe from the Columbia River in the
West to Hudson Bay in the East where he arrived at the end of August 1827. It is extraordinary the hardship he and
his companions endured during the four months trek of three thousand miles or
more. One can only wonder how they could have survived with little equipment,
poor clothing, an unreliable supply of food, some hostile inhabitants, and the
extraordinary vagaries of the weather and the physical environment.
 |
| David Douglas |
In 1829 Douglas was again sent by the Royal Horticultural
Society to the West where he arrived in California in 1840 after a further
journey around the Horn. Here the Spanish were still in charge. It was a better
settled and more southerly region than the Washington and Oregon areas and he
suffered less hardship there. Although a Presbyterian, he received great
kindness and assistance from the Spanish monks. Again he worried about the
balance of Nature being destroyed because of the policies of the explorers and
particularly of the Hudson Bay Company. The Company had a policy of clearing
all the animals from the areas occupied by them, leaving large tracts bereft of
indigenous fauna. He expressed his concern about the slaughter of the animals
to a leading employee of the Company but he was vigorously confronted and
advised to mind his own business.
Douglas found new trees in California, including the
Monterey Pine (Pinus radiata) and some of the giant sequoia. The Monterey had
previously been described by Menzie but was first introduced to Europe by
Douglas. He also found and introduced the big cone pine, Pinus coulteri.
 |
| Douglas memorial at Scone |
He went from California to Hawaii where he died at the
age of 35 apparently having fallen into a cattle pit but there is considerable
doubt about the exact cause of his death and there were persistent rumours of
his being murdered. He had gone to Hawaii to continue his botanical studies and
to climb and explore the islands’ great mountains and volcanoes. His death
proved to be a major loss to Britain, Ireland and Europe, and a source of great
regret to his many admirers in the world of botany and forestry. He is buried
in Hawaii and there is a 23 foot memorial to him erected in the churchyard in
Scone in Scotland where he was born. The memorial was provided by tree lovers,
botanists and gardeners from many lands. His real memorial is to be found in
the gardens, landscapes and forests worldwide.
 |
| A Douglas Fir at Scone Palace |
His contribution to forestry should not overshadow his
seminal contribution to botany. He found hundreds of new species of shrubs and
plants, nearly all of which reached Britain safely, thanks to his careful
preparation of seeds and seedlings, and to his care in sending these by
different routes to ensure that at least one sample would arrive safely in
London or Glasgow. The biography lists a large number of the trees he
introduced and some of the plants which adorn our gardens to-day. The great
revival of interest in trees in Ireland at the beginning of the nineteenth
century was shared by Britain which had also reached dangerous levels of
deforestation. The turnabout was largely due to Douglas and the introduction of
so many valuable trees of high quality timber which found a suitable
environment in these islands and indeed in many other European, African and
Australasian countries.
Like other human tendencies to exaggerate, the tree
lover or even expert may exaggerate the age of trees but we know from the late introductions
by Douglas that none in Europe can be older than 175 years. Whether the imported
trees will have the same long lifespan as their progenitors growing on the
Pacific Coast of America remains to be seen. Following Douglas most of our great
estates in the British Isles and Europe were planted with his trees widely. More
than one and half centuries later you will find these trees singly or in groups
everywhere, even in such areas as suburban Dublin as well as in parts of the countryside
where estates have been taken over by farmers, parks and suburban areas, The sequoias
are among the greatest trees known and are long-lasting in their normal habitat
in Western America but five of the 17 Wellingtonias near our house in South
Dublin are showing serious signs of leaf loss and diminished growth in the past
ten years. The cause of their decline is not clear but it does not augur too
well for their long-term survival, |
| Trunk of a Wellingtonia Sequoia |
Postscript (2014). The above review was
written in 2004. Some of the Wellingtonias are now dead or nearly so, and the
others are showing various degrees of distress. They lie in about two acres of
ground in a building estate close to my house and it is likely that they are suffering
from the effects of honey fungus, a slow invasive infection of the roots of
trees which, because our failure to find a remedy of the disease, will
inexorably lead to their final destruction.
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