Scottish Plant Hunters with a connection to the SRGC and Scotland
A–C - short references.
The following names are included on this page, please click a name to go to the section:
Jim Archibald
Jim Archibald, along with his wife Jenny, was part of the UK horticultural scene from the 1960s to 2010. He travelled very widely throughout the world and introduced many wild-collected seed to cultivation.
During his early years in Scotland, Jim had travelled in search of plants through North Africa and the Middle East, collaborating with the Royal Botanic Gardens at Edinburgh and Kew. He also worked with Jack Drake at his nursery in the Scottish Highlands.
From 1967 he spent over 10 years with Eric Smith running ‘The Plantsmen’, a nursery based in Dorset, UK, specializing in unusual herbaceous and alpine plants. Many of the plants they introduced are now classic garden-plants. After Eric's retirement, Jim and Jenny Archibald ran the Dorset nursery together from 1975.
From 1983 they spent most of their looking for plants in the wild. Over the years they travelled through most of southern Europe and North Africa, through Turkey and the Near East to Iran, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. They journeyed extensively through western North America many times and in South America through the Andes of Colombia, Ecuador, Chile and Argentina. The visited the New Zealand mountains and the South African Drakensberg. Few people could rival the extent of their knowledge of plants in the wild and even fewer could equal their experience of growing and propagating these same plants in cultivation.
For well over the next twenty years Jim and Jenny Archibald specialised in supplying seeds from wild species of non-woody plants of potential garden-value to the most advanced amateur and professional specialist-growers throughout the cool-temperate and continental climatic regions of the world.
The SRGC is pleased to be able to host the Archibald Archive. This contains historic Collection Fieldnotes, Seedlists, and Nursery catalogues along with much other information.
References:
This SRGC website hosts the Archibald Archive here.
Arthur Kilpin Bulley was not strictly plant hunter, but is included here because, as a nurseryman, he funded and sent out several plant hunters.
Bulley, was born in Cheshire, the fourth son and thirteenth of fourteen children of Samuel Bulley, cotton broker. He entered the family firm of S. M. Bulley & Son. Cotton imports into Liverpool were increasing, and he prospered at the Liverpool cotton exchange, though he became distinctive there for his unconventional dress, tastes, and outlook.
He married Harriet Whishaw, cousin of the Antarctic explorer Edward Wilson. They started their married life in West Kirby and, sharing a love of flowers, joined the Liverpool Naturalists' Field Club, where Bulley demonstrated his botanical prowess by winning prizes for the Latin names of the greatest number of species, and recorded new localities of rare plants for the Flora of Liverpool (1902). Throughout the 1890s Bulley's enthusiasm for growing unusual plants in his garden intensified, and he searched worldwide, writing to botanic gardens and nurserymen, missionaries, consuls, and customs officers for seed of 'new and rare out-of-the-way' alpine and hardy flowers. Augustine Henry, who sent Bulley seeds from Yunnan province in China, referred to him as 'a bit of a Fabian, who wants to introduce beautiful plants to the cottages of the poor'. Bulley began to exchange seeds and plants with the royal botanic gardens of Kew and Edinburgh; the latter's keeper, Isaac Bayley Balfour, visited Bulley's garden in 1896, and was astonished by his gardening skill.
In 1897–8 Bulley bought 60 acres of hilltop and farmland on which to build a house, Mickwell Brow, and create an ideal garden, Ness Gardens, at Ness, Cheshire. He and his wife were devoted to social concerns and local philanthropic work, and he was a member of the Fabian Society. His gardens were his consuming hobby. The two main gardens, the rock garden and the herbaceous garden, were well stocked by 1900 and, on principle, always open to the public.
In 1904 Bulley started a commercial nursery in his garden. This became the seed and plant firm Bees Ltd (originally named A. Bee & Co from his initials) specializing in alpine and hardy plants, and which hired professional plant collectors and raised, marketed, and sold their seeds. In 1904, on the advice of I. B. Balfour, Bulley sent the Scot George Forrest on his first, three-year expedition to Yunnan, launching Forrest's productive career. Bees' seed catalogue for 1909 advertised 'New Plants from China', including the award-winning Primula bulleyana and Primula vialii, while Ness Gardens was described as having 'one of the largest collections of Chinese ornamental plants in Great Britain'.
Bulley invited Frank Kingdon Ward to go on two expeditions to the eastern Himalayas on behalf of the firm in 1911 and 1913. He sent Roland Edgar Cooper (1890–1962) to collect seed in the central Himalayas, in Sikkim in 1913 and in Bhutan in 1914. Only the First World War brought Bees' sole sponsorship of plant collectors to a premature end.
Even during the war, in 1916, Bulley personally contributed £600 to Reginald Farrer's expenses for a seed-share from Kansu, China, and after the war, in 1919, he subscribed to syndicates of three expeditions, by Farrer, Forrest, and Kingdon Ward, contributing to a flood of new rhododendrons into Britain.
In 1922 Bulley declined the Royal Horticultural Society's highest award, the Victoria medal of honour, 'on the ground that he had a strong objection to decorations of any kind'. Retired from his cotton firm, he was free to travel to the southern hemisphere, leaving his long-serving head gardener, Josiah Hope (1875–1970), in charge at Ness Gardens. For more than a decade he joined other wealthy gardeners to finance expeditions in return for seeds that he would willingly share. In 1925 he was in a syndicate with the Hon. Henry Duncan McLaren, John Charles Williams, and Lionel de Rothschild, sending Harold Comber (1897–1969) to the Andes. In 1926 he engaged Walter Siehe to collect bulbous plants in Asia Minor. In 1929–30 Bulley subscribed to expeditions by Clarence Elliott (1881–1969) in the Andes, and to Forrest's last expedition in China. From 1932 to 1937 Bulley helped fund Edward Kent Balls (1892–1984) in Persia, Morocco, and Greece. In 1934 Bulley gave a BBC North Regional broadcast on 'The fascination of alpines', encouraging listeners to open their gardens 'to people who have simply no beauty at all in their lives'.
Bulley died at home, Mickwell Brow, Ness, Neston, Cheshire in 1942. In 1948, in the spirit of Bulley previously buying land to donate to the National Trust, his daughter Lois presented the Ness land and the family home to the University of Liverpool, with an endowment of £75,000. The gardens are now the University of Liverpool Botanic Gardens.
Dugald Carmichael was born at Stronacraoibh, Lismore Island, and died in Appin was a Scottish botanist and officer in the 72nd Highlanders. He is known as the "Father of Marine Botany". He was a friend of Sir William Hooker.
At a very young age he took an interest in the island’s flora and fauna which subsequently became his life-long passion. Dugald Carmichael successfully studied classics at the University of Glasgow attending the 1787 Greek class of John Young. However, his real passion lay in science and he went to the University of Edinburgh to study medicine. He then became a qualified surgeon and from where he qualified as a surgeon.
He served as an assistant-surgeon in the Argyllshire Fencibles in Ireland for nine years, before he then gained a commission as an ensign with the 72nd Highlanders which offered him the opportunity to travel to foreign climes. He was able to make pioneering botanical collections as far afield as South Africa, Mauritius, India, New Zealand as well as Tristan de Cunha.
Carmichael would go on to take part in numerous expeditions during his career as an army surgeon: In 1805, he was among those who served under Sir David Baird, who commanded the expedition against the Cape of Good Hope; In 1807, Carmichael volunteered to go to Algoa Bay, modern day Port Elizabeth; In 1810, he was part of the expedition in Mauritius, to capture it from French rule; in 1817 he joined the expedition that took possession of Tristan da Cunha.
Carmichael was granted leave in 1813 during which time he explored the Island of Bourbon, modern day Réunion.
Dugald Carmichael retired to Appin and took the tenancy of Ardtur Farm at Port Appin lying opposite to Lismore where he continued his research and published his last study Mosses of Lorn. Despite not being in good health, he still managed to make his last field trip to St Kilda. At the age of fifty-five Carmichael passed away and was interred at Clachlan near St Moluag’s cathedral.
Despite being relatively unknown today due to his retiring nature, his friendship with the leading botanists of his day, Sir William Hooker and Robert Brown, made sure that his scientific discoveries did not go unnoticed by Charles Darwin.
Cawdor, John ('Jack') Campbell, 5th Earl (1900-1970)John Duncan Vaughan Campbell, 5th Earl Cawdor, TD (17 May 1900 – 9 January 1970), styled Viscount Emlyn between 1911 and 1914, was of Scots-Welsh extraction.
He was the son of Hugh Campbell, 4th Earl Cawdor and Joan Thynne. He fought in the First World War with the Royal Navy and was awarded the Territorial Decoration. He fought in the Second World War as a Lieutenant-Colonel and was mentioned in dispatches.
He was invested as a Fellow, Royal Geographical Society, the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland and the Society of Antiquaries.
Lord 'Jack' Cawdor mainly funded and accompanied Frank Kingdon Ward (q.v.) on their expedition (1924-25) to the Tsangpo Gorges, in south east Tibet. This expedition that was subsequently described in Kingdon Ward's book 'The Riddle of the Tsangpo Gorges' (1926), to which Lord Cawdor contributed Chapters XIX and XX. This book was republished (2001) in a new edition edited by Kenneth Cox of Glendoick after his expedition, with others, retracing the original 1924-5 route.
Cawdor Castle in the Scottish Highlands has a Tibetan garden. Auchindoune gardens, is a collection of shrubs and flowers which planted by Jack Cawdor along the banks of the Cawdor Burn.
An Edinburgh-based botanist who collected for Bulley (see above).
Rowland Edgar Cooper was one of the original seven who met to discuss the possibility of forming the SRGC in July 1933, and was one of our Founder Members.
He took the broad view of the general aspects of a problem. This tendency to stand back and take in a comprehensive picture annoyed many of his contemporaries, who regarded him as something of a butterfly who was unable to concentrate on a problem but flitted around it making light and irrelevant comments. What they missed was the fact that these comments often hit more closely and aptly than their own carefully thought out notions.
He possessed a shattering sense of humour which could be extremely disconcerting at times, but was never cruel. He was a source of sound, kindly and helpful advice to those who appealed to him for it, and it
was based on his wide knowledge of the world and its ways. He had the knack of seeing a few steps farther on than one could see when in trouble, so that his advice seemed sometimes wide of the mark, but in the long run it was not. As a collector, he was unfortunate in that he was overshadowed by Forrest and Kingdon-Ward, and that he was collecting just before of the First World War. The result was that many of his plants were lost and had to be 're-discovered' by others. One of the best examples was Primula bellidifolia, which had to wait for a further collection much later to be established in gardens. He had a good eye for a plant and it was a pity that his professional commitments did not let him go on further expeditions.
Cooper was the second official lecturer of the Club, for the first lecture was given by David Wilkie in Dundee and this was followed a fortnight later by Cooper in Edinburgh. Both lectures were in November 1933 and were advertising for the newly-formed Club. In January 1934 he wrote and the Club issued a leaflet which was sent to various horticultural societies, and in November 1934 he completed the 'George Forrest Book' (a pdf copy is available here on our Publications page). At the end of 1934 the Journal was decided on and Cooper became the first Editor of the SRGC Journal, an office which he held for 3 years until 1937. In 1950 he was elected an Honorary Vice-President in recognition of all his services to the Club, but after his retiral in 1951 he went to Southend to live and his principal contact with the Club was by letter. He gave wise counsel on many of the Club’s Committees. He was so deeply versed in Club affairs and organisation that he was almost automatically appointed, in his own words "as a reference source".
He was a fine photographer and and had a large collection of slides of plant-habitats in the Himalayas, for this was a subject which always held a deep fascination for him
and on which he could talk entertainingly for hours.
This section is coming soon. 
Arthur Kilpin Bulley was not strictly plant hunter, but is included here because, as a nurseryman, he funded and sent out several plant hunters.
