Old Photograph High Street Falkirk Scotland

Old photograph of a Tram, shops, cars, people, and hotel on the High Street in Falkirk, Scotland. George Forrest was a Scottish botanist, who became one of the first explorers of China's then remote southwestern province of Yunnan, generally regarded as the most biodiverse province in the country. He was born in Falkirk, Scotland on 13 March 1873. He went to Kilmarnock Academy. On leaving school, he was apprenticed with a local chemist until 1891 when, on the inheritance of a small legacy, he decided to travel to Australia, where he searched for gold and also worked on a sheep station before returning to Scotland in 1902. Forrest's life then took a most unexpected turn; caught in a shower while fishing the Gladhouse Loch in Tweedsdale, he sought shelter beneath an overhanging bank where he chanced upon an ancient stone coffin. The discovery led to his introduction to Professor Bayley Balfour, Regius Keeper of the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh, who offered him a job in the Herbarium. Whilst Forrest doubtless found the indoor work dull, it was to provide an excellent preparation for his explorations. A year later, Balfour recommended Forrest, now aged 30, to Liverpool horticulturist and cotton broker Arthur Kilpin Bulley, who was sponsoring an expedition to southwestern China in search of exotic plants, particularly species of rhododendron, of which Yunnan has many. Altogether, Forrest made seven trips to Yunnan, collecting samples and seeds for the Herbarium and for avid collectors willing to pay for new species to add to their collections. In total, he brought back perhaps 31,000 plant specimens. Forrest married Clementina Traill in 1907; they had three sons. On 5 January 1932, while hunting game in the hills near Tengchong, the town wherein Forrest traditionally set up his base, he suffered a massive heart attack and died instantly. He was buried at Tengchong, next to his friend George Litton, who had been Acting British Consul there until his death 26 years earlier.



All photographs are copyright of Sandy Stevenson, Tour Scotland, and may not be used without permission.

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