Spring David Douglas Memorial Scone Perth Perthshire Scotland

Tour Scotland 4K Spring travel video of the David Douglas Memorial by a cherry blossom tree in the old Parish graveyard on visit to Scone by Perth, Perthshire. Scottish botanist David Douglas was born on 25th of June 1799 in Scone. He was born to John Douglas, a stonemason, and Jean Drummond. He attended Kinnoull School and upon leaving found work as an apprentice to William Beattie, head gardener at Scone Palace, the seat of the Earl of Mansfield. He spent seven years in this position, completing his apprenticeship, and then spent a winter at a college in Perth to learn more of the scientific and mathematical aspects of plant culture. After a further spell of working at Valleyfield House in Fife, during which time he had access to a library of botanical and zoological books, he moved to the Botanical Gardens of Glasgow University and attended botany lectures. William Jackson Hooker, who was Garden Director and Professor of Botany, was greatly impressed with him and took him on an expedition to the Highlands before recommending him to the Royal Horticultural Society of London, England. Douglas made three separate trips from Britain to North America. His first trip, to eastern North America, began on 3 June 1823, with a return in the late autumn of 1823. The second was to the Pacific Northwest, from July 1824 returning October 1827. His third and final trip started in England in October 1829. On that last journey he went first to the Columbia River, then to San Francisco, then in August 1832, to Hawaii. In October 1832 he returned to the Columbia River region. A year later, in October 1833, he returned to Hawaii, arriving on 2 January 1834. The second expedition starting in 1824 was his most successful. The Royal Horticultural Society sent him back on a plant hunting expedition in the Pacific Northwest that ranks among the great botanical explorations. In the spring of 1826, David Douglas was compelled to climb a peak, Mount Brown, of the mythical pair Hooker and Brown, near Athabasca Pass to take in the view. In so doing, he became the first mountaineer in North America. He introduced the Douglasfir into cultivation in 1827. Other notable introductions include Sitka Spruce, Sugar Pine, Western White Pine, Ponderosa Pine, Lodgepole Pine, Monterey Pine, Grand Fir, Noble Fir and several other conifers that transformed the British landscape and timber industry, as well as numerous garden shrubs and herbs such as the Flowering currant, Salal, Lupin, Penstemon and California poppy. His success was well beyond expectations; in one of his letters to Hooker, he wrote " you will begin to think I manufacture pines at my pleasure ". Altogether he introduced about 240 species of plants to Britain. He first briefly visited Hawaii in 1830 on his way to the Pacific Northwest. He returned again in December 1833 intending to spend three months of winter there. He was only the second European to reach the summit of the Mauna Loa volcano. Douglas died under mysterious circumstances while climbing Mauna Kea in Hawaii at the age of 35 on 12th of July 1834. He was buried in an unmarked common grave near Mission House in Honolulu, Hawaii.

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

View the most recent Tour Scotland photographs.