David Douglas was born in the village of Scone in 1799 and worked as an under-gardener in the newlylandscaped palace grounds. He later went to work at the Botanical Gardens in Glasgow where his talent was quickly noticed and he was sent to North America as a collector for the Royal Horticultural Society. In the course of only a few years he sent back over 200 new species of plants. Lupins, phlox, sunflowers, Californian poppy, mimulus, flowering currant and snowberry are just a few of the common plants he discovered. He is most famous though for the giant conifer which he initially named Pseudotsuga menziesii after its discoverer, Archibald Menzies of Aberfeldy, another Scot, who had sailed to the Pacific coast with Captain Vancouver.
Douglas travelled widely and adventurously, from Oregon to Hudson’s Bay and even Hawaii, recording and collecting plants wherever he went. His journeys took him through unmapped forest and to the summits of previously unscaled mountains. After surviving many dangers he fell, in suspicious circumstances, into a pit that had been dug as an animal trap. Here he was tragically gored to death by a wild bison bull that had also fallen into the pit. He was only 36 years old.