David Douglas, Scone Palace and William Hooker: The 'Douglas, Hooker, Matthew Hypothesis'

David Douglas

The Douglas fir tree is one of the most loved of forest trees. It is named after the plant collecting explorer botanist David  Douglas.  Born in 1799, Douglas was - from the age of 11 -  an apprentice gardener at Scone Palace, where he stayed for seven years.  He was befriended by William Hooker - then Professor of botany at Glasgow University. With Hookers assistance in 1823, he  took up employment with the Horticultural society of London.

Douglas Fir

From 1823 onwards, Douglas went on many plant collecting expeditions  and corresponded regularly with Hooker. Many of those letters are in the Director's Archive at Kew Gardens. Douglas met an ignoble end in Hawaii IN 1834 where he was either gored by a bull after falling into a 'wild bullock-trap  pit' or else - claim some - most likely murdered. But before that event... as the Famous Scots website explains:

'David Douglas returned to London as a hero and was fêted by all. He was made a fellow of the Geological and Zoological Societies of London. But he was not equipped to deal with fame and he had problems writing up his material from his journey despite having a detailed journal written during the expedition.

He travelled to Scotland to see his mother, now a widow, and a seed of the Douglas Fir was planted in the grounds of Scone Palace - which is still growing there (see illustration). He also visited his guide and mentor, Prof Hooker in Glasgow.'

What the story of Douglas teaches us is that Patrick Matthew would have picked up much of his forestry and arboricultural knowledge whilst living at his birthplace of Rome Farm, which sat in the grounds of Scone Palace, where Douglas became a botanist with expert knowledge of forest trees.

Born in 1790,  Matthew, in 1817, inherited the nearby house and orchards of  Gourdiehill at the age of 17. And we know that at some point between 1827 and 1829, Douglas returned to Scone Palace to see his ailing mother.

From this information, we can see that there were two periods of time in which David Douglas and Patrick Matthew might possibly have met. It is important to note: at least at the time of writing, however, we have zero evidence that they ever did meet.

In the period 1810 - 1817 Douglas was an apprentice gardener and forester at Scone Palace.

Born at Rome farm in 1790, and living nearby at Gourdiehill, Matthew could have met Douglas at any point between 1810 (when Douglas was 11 and Matthew 20) and 1817 (when Douglas was 18 and Matthew 28). 

In the period 1827- 1829 they might have met when Douglas was aged 28-29 and Matthew aged 37.

What is most intriguing about the Douglas connection to Matthew is that they were neighbours. Moreover, both lived at nearby seats The Palace of Scone being the aristocratic seat of Lord Mansfield (more on him and his family links to Matthew here), and Laird Patrick Matthew's being his place as a member of the landed gentry and scottish nobility with ancestral links most likely (according to the very latest unpublished research on the topic by Patrick Matthew's third great grandson Major Howard Minnick) going back to Robert the Bruce and Admiral Lord Viscount Duncan.

Douglas and Matthew were neighbours for two significant overlapping windows of time. Both were hugely interested in arboriculture and general botany. Both published major works on that topic. Both had significant links with Scone Palace.

Most intriguingly, in the story of  Patrick Matthew, Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace, is the fact that William Hooker was mentor to both Douglas and Wallace!

We know that Wallace (1855 and 1858), like Darwin, replicated Matthew's (1831) original discovery of the full hypothesis of natural selection and his unique artificial versus natural explanatory analogy of differences - claiming to have done so independently of Matthew's prior- publication, despite the fact it is newly discovered (Sutton 2014) that the editor of the journal that published Wallace's Sarawak paper on evolution had years earlier read and cited Matthew's book. And we know that the naturalist Loudon - who reviewed Matthew's book in 1832 wherein he wrote that Matthew appeared to have something original to say on the 'origin of species' was well known to William Hooker and a friend and co-author of William Hooker's best friend the botanist John Lindley. Most notably, William Hooker was the father of Darwin's best friend and botanical mentor Joseph Hooker and Darwin also met William Hooker.

Conclusion and the way forward 

It is just possible that we might learn from what survives of the correspondence of David Douglas - particularly with William Hooker - that evidence exists to 100 per cent prove William Hooker was aware of Matthew's original ideas on the origin of species before Darwin and Wallace replicated them. I think this is certainly something worth investigating further. Let's call it the Douglas, Hooker, Matthew Hypothesis.