Robert Fortune - 1813-1880
Robert Fortune was born in Scotland in 1813 and began his working career as a garden boy at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh. His career progressed until 1842 when he was Deputy Superintendent of the Horticultural Society's garden in Chiswick, England. They chose him to lead the first plant hunting expedition into China and so he became one of the first British plant collectors in China. He arrived in Hong Kong with no experience of collecting or of the Chinese language. This first expedition was limited in success because the country was still in disorder after the Opium War and access was restricted to the coastal areas only. Fortune brought back new plants and also new techniques, including the art of bonsai. He set out on his second expedition to China in 1848, where he not only collected plants, but also had been asked to learn the art of tea growing and to collect specimens of the tea plants. Fortune, who had arrived in China five years previously, unable to speak a word of Chinese, managed in 1848 to learn the secrets of tea making and to successfully disguise himself as a Chinese peasant in order to smuggle the tea plants to India. Fortune's achievement helped to establish the tea industry in India and Ceylon.

Fortune carried on collecting for almost twenty years and was responsible for introducing many new species to Britain including chrysanthemums, azalea, forsythia and jasmine. He retired in 1862 and became a farmer in Scotland until he died in 1880.

George Forrest - 1873-1932
George Forrest was born in Falkirk, Scotland in 1873. He began working life in a chemist's shop in Kilmarnock but he soon decided that this life was not for him and when he inherited a small amount of money he immediately set out for Australia to visit relatives and to work there for a while. He tried his hand at prospecting and at sheep farming before returning to Scotland (via South Africa) in 1902.

Forrest was always interested in botany and collecting - this came about as a result of a fishing trip, where he spotted the corner of a stone coffin in an ancient burial ground while he was sheltering from the rain. Curious to discover more about his find, he went to the Antiquarian Museum in Queen Street, Edinburgh where he came into regular contact with the Regius Keeper at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, who offered him a minor position working in the herbarium. He was thirty years old and worked in the herbarium for a while, walking six miles to and from his work each day as he had no love for the city and much preferred to live out in the countryside. His first chance to travel on a botanic mission originated with a nurseryman - Mr AK Bulley of Neston in Cheshire who was the founder and owner of Bee's Seeds Ltd. He funded Forrest on trips to China to collect specimens for Bees Seeds and the actual number of plants that bear the word 'forestii' in their names show exactly how successful his trips were. He is responsible for a significant amount of Chinese plants found growing in gardens in the United States of America and Great Britain. Among his finds are Abies georgei, acer, aster, adenophera, dacocephalum, hemerocallis, iris, primula and rhododendron forestii. Forrest made five expeditions to China in total, collecting for over 28 years in south-west China and Tibet - he collected birds and butterflies as well as plants. He was very well respected by the Chinese and used the medicinal skills he had learned while working as a chemist to treat the Chinese for a variety of illnesses, including smallpox. Forrest himself suffered from illness and he died in Yunnan in the Upper Mekong River in 1932.

David Douglas - 1799-1834
David Douglas was born in Scone near Perth on 25 July 1799. From an early age he enjoyed the outdoors and natural history and when he was 11 years old he began a seven year apprenticeship as a gardener under William Beatty, head gardener to the Earl of Mansfield at Scone Palace. He moved to the gardens at Valleyfield near Culross, Fife and then eventually took a position in the Botanic Gardens in Glasgow where he became firm friends with William Hooker, Professor of Botany at Glasgow University. Hooker taught Douglas much about practical botany as they walked the hills of Scotland together. In 1823 Joseph Sabine, Secretary of the Horticultural Society of London (now the Royal Horticultural Society), asked Hooker to recommend a suitable botanical collector to work for the Society. Hooker put forward Douglas's name. He went to London, expecting to be sent to China but the political situation there forced a change of plan and instead he was sent to New England on the East Coast of North America. He reached New York on 5 August 1823 where he spent four months on the vegetable markets of New York and the flower garden of Mr Van Ransalier in Albany. He then headed to Lake Erie where he encountered wild America and collected seed from plants and trees including veronicas, helianthums and aster. He then headed back to New York via Niagara Falls and Philadelphia, collecting more specimens on the way. He arrived back in Britain on 10 January 1824 and his trip was hailed as a huge success because of the amount of specimens he had brought back.

His next collecting trip was more extensive and he travelled to the largely unexplored territory of the Pacific North West, stopping to collect in Madeira, Rio de Janeiro, Juan Fernandez and the Galapagos Islands. He eventually travelled upstream on the Columba River to Fort Vancouver, where he was based for the next two years. He made many local trips during his first summer there, accompanied by white trappers and traders at first, but then eventually by the native Americans. He became great friends with the chief of the Chenook and Cochalii tribes, Cockqua, who cooked a giant sturgeon measuring 10 feet long and weighting 400-500 pounds as a mark of his friendship. When Douglas arrived back at Fort Vancouver on 5 August, he heard that a ship was due to leave for Britain within the next few weeks. He packed up his collection and headed off but when he finally arrived he was told he was too late - the ship had set sail an hour before he got there. He turned back and stayed at Fort Vancouver until spring 1826 but in March of that year set out on a tough journey which lasted until August and encompassed the Blue Mountains. He became the first European to scale the heights of the mountains, where he discovered many new species including the only North American peony - Paeonii brownii. It was at this time that he began to experience problems with his eyesight - due to blowing sands and snow blindness.

Douglas returned to Fort Vancouver once again where he made certain that his precious botanical collection was shipped back to Britain. He also visited his friend Cockqua. The following spring he joined the annual Hudson Bay Company Express on its transcontinental trek of 995 miles. He walked for 25 days until he developed sore feet and had to transfer to canoe. At the end of April they reached the Rockies and, undeterred by his sore feet, Douglas still managed to climb one of them.

He returned to England on 11 October 1827, where he received a triumphant welcome. However he soon grew bored and left Portsmouth to return to North America almost two years to the day (26 October 1829) since his return. During his last expedition he concentrated on the west coast of America - he dispatched his Californian collection of over 670 plant species to England in August 1832.

Douglas had a brief stopover in Hawaii and reached Fort Vancouver on 14 October. He was keen to visit Alaska and to make his way home via Siberia and he set off on 19 March 1833 on his most ambitious journey yet. He reached Fort St James but was turned back for reasons unknown. His canoe ran onto rocks in the Frazier River and he was thrown into a whirlpool. He was lucky to escape with his life but he lost all his personal possessions, his plant collection and his journal. He was very upset and also suffering from poor health (he had lost the sight in one eye) so he turned back to Hawaii, arriving on 23 December 1833. In early July he set out to walk across Mauna Kea, accompanied by his Scots terrier and a servant named John. On the morning of 12 July he called at the hut of a man, Ned Gurney, who was an ex-Botany Bay convict and who trapped the island's wild cattle for a living. His technique for trapping was to dig a pit on the side of a water source, cover it with a flimsy roof and to surround the area with a stockade. The cattle would fall into the pit while trying to get at the water. After breakfast Gurney accompanied Douglas along the path for a mile or so, warning him to be careful about the pits. What happened next is not exactly known, but the most likely explanation is that on hearing an animal trapped in one of the pits, Douglas went over to investigate, lost his footing and fell. His gored and crushed body was found later that day by passing locals. A post mortem carried out by four doctors in Honolulu confirmed that the bullock in the pit had caused fatal injuries.

Douglas is credited with the introduction of over 200 new species, including spectacular conifers that changed the face of the Victorian landscape. Few people realise that Britain only had three native conifers (the yew, Scots Pine and common juniper) and that the towering conifers which grace the skyline of so many landscapes are a result of Douglas's travels through a distant and often inhospitable land. His introduction also forms the basis of the forestry industries in North America (Douglas Fir), Britain (Sitka Spruce) and many Southern Hemisphere countries (Monterey Pine).