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Maple Tree Honors Scottish Plant Hunter
Maple Tree Honors Scottish Plant Hunter.
In both his catalog and monthly magazine the Rochester, New York seedsman James Vick (1818-1882) often mentioned ‘Drummond phlox’ as an ideal annual for the garden.
In his magazine Vick’s Illustrated Monthly in 1878 Vick wrote the following: “The Phlox Drummondii was only discovered about forty years ago in Texas, by Mr. Drummond, a botanical collector sent out by the Glasgow Botanical Society, and it was one of the last plants sent home, for soon after he visited Cuba and died.”
Thomas Drummond (1793-1835) was a Scottish botanical collector.
The phlox is not the only plant named after Mr. Drummond.
Recently I visited the Allen C. Haskell Public Gardens in New Bedford, Mass., once a thriving nursery business and now a public garden, operated by the Trustees of Reservations.
Here is one of the beautiful scenes from that garden. [below]
While walking around the garden, I came across a Norway maple tree whose name is Acer platanoides ‘Drummondii’, or the Drummond maple.
It also was named after the plant collector Thomas Drummond.
Notice the cream-colored edging on the leaf which makes this tree quite distinctive. [below]
We owe a lot to the English and Scottish plant hunters of the nineteenth century.
Many plants we take for granted in the garden today came from the exploration of such plant hunters. That exploration often involved danger, disease, and sometimes death.
At the Haskell Gardens I learned that Drummond had collected 750 species of plants and 150 specimens of birds.
The maple Drummond that stands out at the Haskell Gardens serves as one way to honor this Scottish plant hunter.
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