THE SEEDS OF GENIUS

The rhododendrons that are filling gardens with colour this month are a familiar part of our landscape, but it is easy to forget these are not native to this country. Along with hundreds of our favourite flowers, these beautiful shrubs were brought here by plant hunters, adventurers and explorers who, from the 18th Century on, brought back their many discoveries.

These were ambitious men, many from humble backgrounds, who recognised opportunities for advancement lay in the dense jungles and steep mountainsides at the furthest reaches of the world.

And a surprising number of these plant hunters were Scottish; men such as David Douglas from Scone, who transformed European forestry with his introduction from North America of the Douglas Fir; and Robert Fortune who smuggled the tea plant, Camellia sinensis, from China to India in 1848, establishing a industry that continues to this day.

George Sherriff from Larbert, made perilous trips into Tibet and Bhutan in the 1930s, and George Forrest from nearby Falkirk, made expeditions to the remote Yunnan region of China, resulting in more than 30,000 plants being introduced to western horticulture.

But plant hunters don’t just belong to the past; botanists from the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh and nurserymen and women from across the country, still step off the beaten track, endure earthquakes, steamy jungles and wars to capture for science some of many thousands of plants that even today remain to be discovered.