David Douglas
His collecting adventures took him 12,000 miles on foot, horseback and canoe. There are more plants named for Douglas (over 200, I think) than for any other person in the history of scientific nomenclature. While Douglas' greatest successes were in the Columbia Territory, also known as the Oregon Territory, in California alone he discovered and introduced hundreds more to cultivation. He brought the world some of the most ornamental flowers for the gardens of the then "civilized" areas: California poppies, lupines, pentstemons, evening primroses, and the only peony in the Americas. He discovered seven of the seventeen pines in the Western United States, including the Sugar pine. The Sitka Spruce was among his discoveries. There is a plaque on Mauna Kea, another by birthplace and another by his death place. Mount Douglas, a peak over 11,000 feet high in the Rockies, is named for him. The Royal Horticultural Society finally published his journals sixty years after his death.
Almost without exception, whether we are critics or not in current environmentalism, we look to peoples in countries with territories in the Amazon, Southeast Asia and Africa as offenders against the environment without considering our own dismal record in the United States, Canada and England. The sad fact is that at one time we possessed forests as enchanted and exotic as one can dream, lands of incomprehensible beauty by today's standards. In their places are the dusty and flood prone agricultural fields from the Sacramento River delta - now the richest farmlands in the world, to the tamed and manipulated wildernesses in the Pacific Northwest. Drives to a tiny remaining redwood stand can hardly convey the feelings David Douglas had as he walked through miles of very dense forests frequently populated exclusively with 200-300 foot high trees from five to fifteen feet in diameter! San Franciscans will never know what could have been on the pillaged bald and golden grassy hillsides which today we are tricked into believing are natural and pretty, though somewhat barren countryside, as they escape to Yosemite, almost a pale, yet very tantalizing reminder of the destinations visited by Douglas during his wanderings.
The natural pastures and meadows covered by California poppies (Another first Douglas made, introducing this ornamental to the world from seeds he collected along the Columbia River in 1825). are only dreams for us today as we can never know them in their native state. As the late 1820's dawned, Douglas witnessed with great grief the large scale and wanton destruction of irreplaceable ecosystems to make room for timber, agricultural and ranchlands. It is even more far reaching - The Columbia River itself, when the snow in the Rocky Mountains melts, rivals the Amazon River in water flow has been tamed by some of the environmentally most destructive acts of man by damming, making reservoirs, and completely destroying some of the most scenic falls in the world.
California and the Pacific Northwest were true fantasy lands by today's standards, waiting for the "heros" like the legendary Paul Bunyan to destroy them completely with a misplaced sense of purpose. Equally destructive were the Johnny Appleseeds and wholesome farmers and ranchers who were all motivated by "progress" to obliterate the beauty around them. By the time of the gold rush in 1849, when the Sacramento Valley was still covered in forests, the magic of California was on its way to be forgotten. Even the grasses which took over the hillsides in the 1830's and helped give the current state its name, the "Golden State", were mistakenly imported weeds which by gold rush time, sent the delicate native grasses to virtual extinction.
Douglas was born in Perth, Scotland on June 25, 1799. He never received a strong formal education. Frequently he played hookey from school to wander about the beautiful outdoors. He had an incredible focus on nature. At 11 years old his father removed him from school and got him a job on the gardening staff of Scone Palace, where he apprenticed. His talents began to shine and he then landed a job on the staff of Valleyfield. At Valleyfield, under the guidance of the head gardener, Douglas was given access to the library and began to learn more about the plants he loved and especially their scientific names. Vallyfield was famed for cultivating many exotic introductions on the estate.
David's drive and focus helped him land a job at Glasgow University to be a gardener in their botanical gardens. There he met a promising and inspiring new professor of botany named William Jackson Hooker. Hooker took Douglas on his local botanizing trips, since Douglas made himself available 24 hours a day 365 days a year and carried supplies with enthusiasm. Douglas learned to press and preserve specimens so well, many specimens of his collections are still available today to see. Through introductions to the elite upper class, Douglas was chosen a few years later by the young Royal Horticultural Society of London to collect in the region now known as the Pacific Northwest of the United States and the adjacent part of Canada.
Douglas' first expedition under the Society was a simple test of his abilities as he focused on the relatively tame pursuit of novel fruit and vegetable varieties in upper state New York to Ontario. While he was there, the Erie Canal was being built. He surprised his employers unexpectedly by great successes on this trip over well studied lands.
In later return journeys to America from 1825-1834, his focus was broadened from edible vegetables to ornamentals, exotics and all else. He met fabulous success in his pursuits in the beaver trapping Oregon region, especially along the recently discovered Columbia River, one of the first Europeans to walk through virgin climax forests of Douglas Firs that today we can only imagine. He was the first to collect seed and introduce this tree which can grow over 500 years to over 250 feet, forever changing the timber industry in America and Europe (The tree was named in his honor posthumously.)
After making his ways overland back to London and receiving unprecedented fame, his uneasiness around the English elite and his rebel spirit quickly led him to California where he thoroughly botanized California, from north of present day San Francisco and Sacramento to Santa Barbara, during a political upheaval which wrestled control from the Franciscan clergy to the native Mexican California sons.
Douglas returned to the Pacific Northwest, to find most of the native tribes he knew and lived with accidental victims of genocide from the diseases introduced into the disappearing paradise. With dreams of going overland to Alaska and onward across Siberia by invitation of the Russians, first traveling through the interior (so far no European had done this in the region of his interest, he penetrated deeply into present day British Columbia only to turn back due to lack of support from the Hudson's Bay Company (on recommendation of the Royal Horticultural Society). This had resulted from his resignation after Society politics changed and his major supporter to whom he was heroically loyal, lost his position as Secretary.
In a state of depression, Douglas headed out to the Sandwich Islands (present day Hawaii), briefly continued botanizing the tropical lands right into the craters of live volcanos. Times were difficult as he was receiving credit from the organizations and people he met based on their understanding that he worked for the Society. Shortly his pretense would be discovered, credit denied and all debts transferred to his personal account. His strategy and dream to botanize together comparing the old world to the new, with a famed Russian botanist from Alaska through Siberia on the Russian Czar's payroll must have seemed hopeless and distant.
Sadly on July 9, 1834, he landed at Kohala Point on the Big Island of the Sandwiches for a trek to Byron's Bay (now Hilo) with his dog Billy and a slave that had been forced upon him. The details of what followed are dubious, but it is believed that the slave was in too much pain to continue, and left at a shady rancher's place, that Douglas continued on and stayed at a well off ranchers the next night who had invented a new form of trapping wild cattle by digging pits around drinking spots and restricting entry. One of the three pits around a pitted pond was known to have a raging bull captured and another a cow in the other, but a third pit was unfilled.
Douglas, by 10:00 am on July 12, a few days after his 35th birthday, was alone with his dog and backpack (weighing 60 pounds, as usual) was mysteriously found mutilated and quite dead in the pit under the bulls' hooves. Why he was in the pit is a subject for speculation as it seems unlikely that such a seasoned adventurer would have accidentally fallen into a pit with a raging and noisy animal made vicious by its captivity. Subsequent investigations failed to solve the puzzle of his death although the shady rancher later modified his account to officials by mentioning Douglas was carrying a considerable sum of money with him, a fact not otherwise substantiated nor expected.
At his violent death, though scarcely 35, he concentrated on his failures and was blind to his successes. Douglas had made a greater impression on botany than any other botanist, although he never was granted the title "Botanist." He never had a formal education, and rarely had time to love, except a surmised brief interlude with a Chinook Indian princess. Yet his obsession and what eventually consumed him was a lifelong quest for adventure and heroic recognition, stemming from the pursuit plants and respect for nature and God. While always uneasy in the presence of the elite, his experiences taught him the then sophisticated techniques of temperature, geographic and altitude measurements of the day. He earned first hand teachings and made numerous contributions to allied natural sciences for geologists, zoologists and other scientists who gained his cooperation and favor as he explored.
