Green Gold: Plants from the Travels of John Jeffrey

Pinus jeffreyi Jeffrey Pine - Branch and cone. Watercolour by Nicola Macartney

The exhibition Green Gold: Plants from the Travels of John Jeffrey has opened in Edinburgh.
Venue: Gateway Gallery, Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh
Dates: 27th April - 30th June 2019
Time: 10:00 - 17:45
Admission: FREE

The exhibition celebrates the life and achievements of plant hunter John Jeffrey. It focuses on his travels in North America in the middle of the nineteenth century. Below you can find out more about:

• botanical paintings in the exhibition
• John Jeffrey, the plant hunter
• ​the book associated with the exhibition

Paintings of plants collected by John Jeffrey

The exhibition includes six especially commissioned watercolour paintings by Nicola Macartney featuring trees and flowering plants collected by Jeffrey in North America.

​I met Nicola last July when she was exhibiting her suite of six paintings at the RHS Botanical Art Show - where she won a Silver Gilt Medal for her exhibit (see below).

Her paintings were created from specimens of plants growing in the Royal Botanic Garden at Edinburgh and Benmore. - quite possibly from the cones and seeds sent back by Jeffrey to Scotland.

"Plants Collected by John Jeffrey" - exhibit at the RHS Botanical Art Show by Nicola Macartney

Nicola Macartney standing next to her watercolour painting of Pinus jeffreyi - the Jeffrey Pine

The exhibition also includes plus materials from RBGE including specimens from the Herbarium, and letters and minutes from their archives.

About John Jeffrey

John Jeffrey was born in Forneth, Parish of Clunie in east Perthshire. He worked as a gardener at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh. A Scottish group known as the Oregon Association (established 1849) appointed him to travel to North America and find trees and collect their seeds.

The intention was that he would continue the efforts of botanist David Douglas (1799–1834) who made three separate trips from Britain to North America. (The Oregon state tree is named after him - its common name being Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii, once Pinus douglasii).

Jeffrey's travels involved:

• a journey by ship in 1850 across the North Atlantic - from Gravesham in Kent to Hudson Bay
• travelling more than 1,200 miles (1,900 km) overland to reach the Columbia River.
• Four years spent exploring Washington, Oregon, and California

The odds were stacked against John Jeffrey from the start. The distances to be travelled across British Columbia and the Rocky Mountains were extraordinary, while the territory itself was challenging due to the extreme cold, high altitude, and unrest among Native American tribes

• Unearthing the epic true story of a missing Scottish explorer | First published in The Scotsman, 25 April 2019 

While exploring he sent the specimens he collected back to Scotland and kept journals of his travels.  He discovered 24 new species many of which now grow in the gardens of the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh and Benmore.

Thanks to his work however the seeds from 119 species were collected and more than 400 plant specimens sent to the Herbarium at RBGE, including seeds and/or specimens of 35 conifer species. Two plant species still bear his name, Dodecatheon jeffreyi and Pinus jeffreyi while a third,Penstemon jeffreyanus, was later renamed by botanists

• John Jeffrey rediscovered | Botanics Stories | Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh

In 1854 he disappeared while travelling east from San Diego across the Colorado Desert. Despite attempts to find him, he was never seen again. 

Below is a video by Gabriel Hemery illustrating the extent of his travels
​
REFERENCES:

• John Jeffrey | Wikipedia
• John Jeffrey rediscovered | Botanics Stories | Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh
• Green Gold: The Epic True Story of Victorian Plant Hunter John Jeffrey by Gabriel Hemery
• Unearthing the epic true story of a missing Scottish explorer | First published in The Scotsman, 25 April 2019 

Green Gold (the book)

The exhibition is associated with the publication of ​Green Gold by Gabriel Hemery.

Gabriel Hemery is the author of

• Green Gold: The Epic True Story of Victorian Plant Hunter John Jeffrey and
• The New Sylva: A Discourse of Forest and Orchard Trees for the Twenty-First Century (Illustrated by

He's a forest scientist by profession and is also the Chief Executive of the Sylva Foundation and has a website which celebrates the wonders of trees, forests and wood. 

Below are two videos 

• the first illustrates the extent of the travels of John Jeffrey across North America and down the west coast before he disappeared on his way to Arizona.
• the second is an interview with Gabriel Hemery in The Edinburgh Bookshop - in which he reads an extract from his book
  

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