Prologue

David Douglas's plant collecting journeys started with a trip to the east coast of the United States in 1823. Leaving London on June 3rd that year he returned in early January 1824. Ideally, I would have liked to do a day-by-day, on the actual day, account here with extracts from his Journal, the detailed daily diary the Horticultural Society required him to keep, but time has marched on and I'm hopelessly out of synch. So let me now, instead, attempt to capture an abridged version of that first 'proving' trip where Douglas first demonstrated his value to the Horticultural Society. Douglas, keen to demonstrate his attention to detail and powers of observation, sometimes gives us too much.  So the format will be 'abridged verbatim' from his Journal with interspersed commentary.  In particular, don't expect long botanical lists of his finds; this will focus more on his activities, the places he went and the people he met.

  

I’ll be working from his Journal entries, on a day-by-day basis following his entries. These blog posts won’t necessarily be a complete verbatim transcription – I’ll be selective about what I think are the interesting bits. Feel free to disagree. It will get you reading his Journal and reaching your own conclusions. I attach a link to his Journal.

In particular, I won’t be reproducing long lists of plants he collected everyday. I will, though, be including some of the landmark finds. Selective you see, at my discretion. In truth, I’m more interested in the sociology of David Douglas – the times, places and societies he lived and travelled in – than the purely botanical aspects, although I would be remiss not to touch on botanical and horticultural themes.

I’ll try to do a post every day but try not to be heartbroken if I fail occasionally – life just gets in the way sometimes. In parallel, I’ll be collating these blog posts into a standalone document.

And – IMPORTANT POINT – COMMENTS ARE WELCOME PLEASE. Let’s make this a living, developing resource where we all think about the life of this remarkable man and use this modern device of a blog– which he would surely have used if it had been around in the 1820s – to honour his memory.

Finally – SECOND IMPORTANT POINT – looking ahead, Douglas will cross the bar of the Columbia River on April 7^th, 1825 and set foot on land on April 9^th. Fast forward to 2025, a mere 7½ years from now, and it will be the 200^th anniversary of his landfall in the PNW. Something to think about? I’ll be a sprightly 75 by then.