As I look around my garden on this July 4th, I'm pleased to see a good number of plants that come from North America, the land of my forefathers. Although I was born in Ireland, my American parents engendered my existence somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean (on a ship of course: no mile-high club for those sturdy Midwesterners) and I spent my youth trawling back and forth between the two countries.
So it is with a patriotic glow that I contemplate the all-American plants in my patch. There is no room in this town garden for those most famous of New World emigrants - the grand conifers, magnolias and maples but dozens of smaller species flourish happily about the place. The shooting star, the piggy-back plant, the beard tongue, the fried-egg plant and the monkey flower are all doing nicely. Their names, in common-sensical American language are much more evocative than their botanical handles. I mean, Dodocatheon, Tolmeia, Penstemon, Limnanthes, and Mimulus don't exactly fire the imagination, do they? In my garden, these plants were all grown from seed or were painlessly acquired from friends or through commerce. But we owe their presence in Europe to the brave plant hunters of previous centuries who faced horrendous conditions in a largely uncharted continent. Soul-piercing weather, treacherous terrain, near-starvation, body-racking fevers, voracious insects, grizzly bears and hostile Indians were regularly on the schedule for these valiant travellers.
"On such occasions I am very liable to become fretful," wrote the great collector David Douglas, the son of a Scottish stone mason and handyman. This was at the end of a dreadful (but not uncommon) day when, after 33 miles of being "drenched and bleached with rain and sleet, chilled with a piercing north wind", he was forced to camp without fire or food. "Most of us would weep, turn up our toes and die," he acknowledges.
It was from these harrowing trips that David Douglas brought home over 200 North American species, including the luminous yellow-and-white fried-egg plant (or poached-egg plant, as we know it here), Limnanthes douglasii, and the festively trimmed tassel tree, Garrya elliptica. Among his other introductions are the Douglas fir, at least five different pines, two mahonias and the Sitka spruce - the forestry tree that many Irish people will not thank him for. He also returned with seed of the Oregon maple (Acer macrophyllum) and the two fine specimens at Trinity College Dublin - one of which is Europe's largest example - were possibly grown from this batch. By the time he was 34, David Douglas was battered, bald and blind in one eye. And while plant-hunting in Hawaii in 1834, his brilliant life was cut short. He was gored to death by a wild bull.
But Douglas was by no means the first plant hunter to explore North America. Two centuries earlier, John Tradescant the Younger made three trips, first to Virginia and later to elsewhere on the new continent. Numerous plants are credited to him: the tulip tree, the red maple, Virginia creeper, Michaelmas daisy, the smoke bush and the spiderwort that bears his name, Tradescantia virginiana - to mention but a few. And a century later, the Philadelphian farmer, John Bartram, collected plants and seed in the wildest parts of America - usually alone, along Indian trails and through swamps and rivers - until he died in 1777. He sent hundreds of consignments to Peter Collinson, a London merchant. Initially, Bartram was paid five guineas for each box of seed of 100 different species. But before long he had 60 British subscribers to fund his expeditions, including a clatter of dukes and earls eager to furnish their estates with the latest fashionable plants. For American plants were all the rage and any plant lover worth his salt had an "American garden" where tulip trees, magnolias, rhododendrons and other acid-loving plants from the New World were grown. (And this was decades before China - the country that spells rhododendrons and magnolias for many gardeners - was opened up to western plant hunters.) In limey Co Westmeath, special peaty soil was brought in to the American garden at Tullynally, the home of the Pakenhams, after the gardener, Mr George, complained that the plants were all mysteriously going yellow. The most magnificent of the Americans was the giant redwood (Sequoiadendron giganteum), introduced in 1853 by William Lobb, who brought with him live seedlings (they'd never allow that today!) from California. The colossal, spongy barked tree, which can live for 3,000 years, was cheekily given a new name, Wellingtonia, to commemorate the Duke of Wellington, who had died the previous year. Celebratory avenues were planted all over Britain and Ireland including the Broad Walk, at Fernhill, in Co Dublin.
And lastly we mustn't forget two Irish plant hunters, Thomas Coulter and Thomas Drummond. To the first we owe another fried-egg plant, Romneya coulteri, from California, and to the second we are indebted for annual phloxes (Phlox drummondii) from Texas.
Diary date: Saturday July 11th, 10 a.m. - 1 p.m.: Janet and David Jeffrey's annual plant sale at 1 Thormanby Lawns, Howth, Co Dublin, is in aid of ARC, the Cancer Support Centre this year. Southern hemisphere plants such as Correa, Olearia and Jovellana will be on offer, as well as other treasures rarely seen in garden centres.