Pinus lambertiana
Pinus lambertiana is the tallest and most massive pine tree, has the longest cones of any conifer. The species name lambertiana was given by the British botanist David Douglas, who named the tree in honour of the English botanist, Aylmer Bourke Lambert, it is native to the mountains of the Pacific coast of North America, from Oregon through California to Baja California. The sugar pine is the tallest and largest Pinus species growing to 40–60 meters tall, exceptionally to 82 m tall, with a trunk diameter of 1.5–2.5 m, exceptionally 3.5 m. The tallest recorded specimen is 83.45 metres tall, is located in Yosemite National Park, was discovered in 2015. The second tallest recorded was "Yosemite Giant", an 82.05 m tall specimen in Yosemite National Park, which died from a bark beetle attack in 2007. The tallest, living specimens today grow in southern Oregon and Yosemite National Park: one in Umpqua National Forest is 77.7 m tall and another in Siskiyou National Forest is 77.2 m tall. Yosemite National Park has the third tallest, measured to 80.5 m tall as of June 2013.
Pinus lambertiana is a member of the white pine group and, like all members of that group, the leaves grow in fascicles of five, with a deciduous sheath. They are 5–11 cm long. Sugar pine is notable for having the longest cones of any conifer 25–50 cm long, exceptionally to 66 cm long, although the cones of the Coulter pine are more massive; the seeds are 1 -- 2 cm long, with a 2 -- 3-centimeter long wing. According to David Douglas, the seeds were eaten by Native Americans; the sugar pine occurs in the mountains of Oregon and California in the western United States, Baja California in northwestern Mexico. The sugar pine has been affected by the white pine blister rust, a fungus, accidentally introduced from Europe in 1909. A high proportion of sugar pines has been killed by the blister rust in the northern part of the species' range that has experienced the rust for a longer period of time; the rust has destroyed much of the Western white pine and whitebark pine throughout their ranges. The U.
S. Forest Service has a program for developing western white pine. Seedlings of these trees have been introduced into the wild; the Sugar Pine Foundation in the Lake Tahoe Basin has been successful in finding resistant sugar pine seed trees and has demonstrated that it is important for the public to assist the U. S. Forest Service in restoring this species. However, blister rust is much less common in California, sugar, Western white and whitebark pines still survive in great numbers there. Naturalist John Muir considered sugar pine to be the "king of the conifers"; the common name comes from the sweet resin. John Muir found, it is known as the great sugar pine. The scientific name was assigned by David Douglas in honor of Aylmer Bourke Lambert. In the Achomawi creation myth, the creator, makes one of the'First People' by intentionally dropping a sugar pine seed in a place where it can grow. One of the descendants in this ancestry is Sugarpine-Cone man, who has a handsome son named Ahsoballache. After Ahsoballache marries the daughter of To'kis the Chipmunk-woman, his grandfather insists that the new couple have a child.
To this end, the grandfather breaks open a scale from a sugar pine cone, secretly instructs Ahsoballache to immerse the scale's contents in spring water hide them inside a covered basket. Ahsoballache performs the tasks that night; the Washo language has a word for sugar pine, simt'á:gɨm, a word for "sugar pine sugar", nanómba. Chase, J. Smeaton. Cone-bearing Trees of the California Mountains. Chicago: A. C. McClurg & Co. p. 99. LCCN 11004975. OCLC 3477527. LCC QK495. C75 C4, with illustrations by Carl Eytel - Kurut, Gary F. "Carl Eytel: Southern California Desert Artist", California State Library Foundation, Bulletin No. 95, pp. 17-20 retrieved November 13, 2011 Muir, J.. My First Summer in the Sierra. Kinloch Jr. Bohun B.. "Pinus lambertiana". In Burns, Russell M.. Silvics of North America. Washington, D. C.: United States Forest Service, United States Department of Agriculture. 1 – via Southern Research Station. Habeck, R. J.. "Pinus lambertiana". Fire Effects Information System. US Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station, Fire Sciences Laboratory – via https://www.feis-crs.org/feis/.
U. C. Jepson Manual treatment for Pinus lambertiana US Forest Service—Dorena Genetic Resource Center — The Sugar Pine Foundation — The Sugar Pine and Western White Pine Restoration Program Pinus lambertiana in the CalPhotos Photo Database, University of California, Berkeley Conifer Specialist Group. "Pinus lambertiana". IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Version 2006. International Union for Conservation of Nature. Retrieved 5 May 2006. Arboretum de Villardebelle: photo of a cone
United States Department of Agriculture
The United States Department of Agriculture known as the Agriculture Department, is the U. S. federal executive department responsible for developing and executing federal laws related to farming and food. It aims to meet the needs of farmers and ranchers, promote agricultural trade and production, work to assure food safety, protect natural resources, foster rural communities and end hunger in the United States and internationally. 80% of the USDA's $141 billion budget goes to the Food and Nutrition Service program. The largest component of the FNS budget is the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the cornerstone of USDA's nutrition assistance; the current Secretary of Agriculture is Sonny Perdue. Many of the programs concerned with the distribution of food and nutrition to people of America and providing nourishment as well as nutrition education to those in need are run and operated under the USDA Food and Nutrition Service. Activities in this program include the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which provides healthy food to over 40 million low-income and homeless people each month.
USDA is a member of the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness, where it is committed to working with other agencies to ensure these mainstream benefits are accessed by those experiencing homelessness. The USDA is concerned with assisting farmers and food producers with the sale of crops and food on both the domestic and world markets, it plays a role in overseas aid programs by providing surplus foods to developing countries. This aid can go through USAID, foreign governments, international bodies such as World Food Program, or approved nonprofits; the Agricultural Act of 1949, section 416 and Agricultural Trade Development and Assistance Act of 1954 known as Food for Peace, provides the legal basis of such actions. The USDA is a partner of the World Cocoa Foundation. Early in its history, the economy of the United States was agrarian. Officials in the federal government had long sought new and improved varieties of seeds and animals for import into the United States. In 1837 Henry Leavitt Ellsworth, a Yale-educated attorney interested in improving agriculture, became Commissioner of Patents, a position within the Department of State.
He began collecting and distributing new varieties of seeds and plants through members of the Congress and agricultural societies. In 1839, Congress established the Agricultural Division within the Patent Office and allotted $1,000 for "the collection of agricultural statistics and other agricultural purposes." Ellsworth's interest in aiding agriculture was evident in his annual reports that called for a public depository to preserve and distribute the new seeds and plants, a clerk to collect agricultural statistics, statewide reports about crops in different regions, the application of chemistry to agriculture. Ellsworth was called the "Father of the Department of Agriculture."In 1849, the Patent Office was transferred to the newly created Department of the Interior. In the ensuing years, agitation for a separate bureau of agriculture within the department or a separate department devoted to agriculture kept recurring. On May 15, 1862, Abraham Lincoln established the independent Department of Agriculture to be headed by a commissioner without Cabinet status, the agriculturalist Isaac Newton was appointed to be the first such commissioner.
Lincoln called it the "people's department." In 1868, the Department moved into the new Department of Agriculture Building in Washington, D. C. designed by famed DC architect Adolf Cluss. Located on Reservation No.2 on the National Mall between 12th Street and 14th SW, the Department had offices for its staff and the entire width of the Mall up to B Street NW to plant and experiment with plants. In the 1880s, varied advocacy groups were lobbying for Cabinet representation. Business interests sought a Department of Commerce and Industry, farmers tried to raise the Department of Agriculture to Cabinet rank. In 1887, the House of Representatives and Senate passed bills giving Cabinet status to the Department of Agriculture and Labor, but the bill was defeated in conference committee after farm interests objected to the addition of labor. On February 9, 1889, President Grover Cleveland signed a bill into law elevating the Department of Agriculture to Cabinet level. In 1887, the Hatch Act provided for the federal funding of agricultural experiment stations in each state.
The Smith-Lever Act of 1914 funded cooperative extension services in each state to teach agriculture, home economics, other subjects to the public. With these and similar provisions, the USDA reached out to every county of every state. During the Great Depression, farming remained a common way of life for millions of Americans; the Department of Agriculture's Bureau of Home Economics, established in 1923, published shopping advice and recipes to stretch family budgets and make food go farther. USDA helped ensure that food continued to be produced and distributed to those who needed it, assisted with loans for small landowners, contributed to the education of the rural youth, it was revealed on August 27th, 2018 that the U. S. Department of Agriculture would be providing U. S. farmers with a farm aid package, which will total $4.7 billion in direct payments to American farmers. This package is meant to offset the losses farmers are expected to incur from retaliatory tariffs placed on American exports during the Trump tariffs.
The Department of Agriculture was authorized a budget for Fiscal Year 2015 of $139.7 billion. The budget authorization is broken down as follows: Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service Animal Damage Control (
Pacific Coast Ranges
The Pacific Coast Ranges, are the series of mountain ranges that stretch along the West Coast of North America from Alaska south to Northern and Central Mexico. The Pacific Coast Ranges are part of the North American Cordillera, which includes the Rocky Mountains, Columbia Mountains, Interior Mountains, the Interior Plateau, Sierra Nevada Mountains, the Great Basin mountain ranges, other ranges and various plateaus and basins; the Pacific Coast Ranges designation, only applies to the Western System of the Western Cordillera, which comprises the Saint Elias Mountains, Coast Mountains, Insular Mountains, Olympic Mountains, Cascade Range, Oregon Coast Range, California Coast Ranges, Transverse Ranges, Peninsular Ranges, the Sierra Madre Occidental. The term Coast Range is not used by the United States Geological Survey to refer only to the ranges east from the Strait of Juan de Fuca in Washington to the California-Mexico border. I.e. the Pacific Border province. The same term is used informally in Canada to refer to the Coast Mountains and adjoining inland ranges such as the Hazelton Mountains, sometimes the Saint Elias Mountains.
The character of the ranges varies from the record-setting tidewater glaciers in the ranges of Alaska, to the rugged Central and Southern California ranges, the Transverse Ranges and Peninsular Ranges, in the chaparral and woodlands ecoregion with Oak Woodland, Chaparral shrub forest or Coastal sage scrub-covering them. The coastline is dropping steeply into the sea with photogenic views. Along the British Columbia and Alaska coast, the mountains intermix with the sea in a complex maze of fjords, with thousands of islands. Off the Southern California coast the Channel Islands archipelago of the Santa Monica Mountains extends for 160 miles. There are coastal plains at the mouths of rivers that have punched through the mountains spreading sediments, most notably at the Copper River in Alaska, the Fraser River in British Columbia, the Columbia River between Washington and Oregon. In California: the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers' San Francisco Bay, the Santa Clara River's Oxnard Plain, the Los Angeles, San Gabriel, Santa Ana Rivers' Los Angeles Basin - a coastal sediment-filled plain between the peninsular and transverse ranges with sediment in the basin up to 6 miles deep, the San Diego River's Mission Bay.
From the vicinity of San Francisco Bay north, it is common in winter for cool unstable air masses from the Gulf of Alaska to make landfall in one of the Coast Ranges, resulting in heavy precipitation, both as rain and snow on their western slopes. The same Winter weather occurs with less frequency and precipitation in Southern California, with the mountains' western faces and peaks causing an eastward rainshadow that produces the arid desert regions. Omitted from the list below, but included is the Sierra Nevada, a major mountain range of eastern California, separated by the Central Valley over much of its length from the California Coast Ranges and the Transverse Ranges. On the West coast of North America, the coast ranges and the coastal plain form the margin. Most of the land is made of terranes. In the north, the insular belt is an accreted terrane; this belt extends from the Wrangellia Terrane in Alaska to the Chilliwack group of Canada. A rupture in Rodinia 750 million years ago formed a passive margin in the eastern Pacific Northwest.
The breakup of Pangea 200 million years ago began the westward movement of the North American plate, creating an active margin on the western continent. As the continent drifted West, terranes were accreted onto the west coast; the timing of the accretion of the insular belt is uncertain, although the closure did not occur until at least 115 million years ago. Other Mesozoic terranes that accreted onto the continent include the Klamath Mountains, the Sierra Nevada, the Guerrero super-terrane of western Mexico. 80 to 90 million years ago the subducting Farallon plate split and formed the Kula Plate to the North. This formed an area in what is now Northern California, where the plates converged forming a Mélange. North of this was the Columbia Embayment, where the continental margin was east of the surrounding areas. Many of the major batholiths date from the late Cretaceous; as the Laramide Orogeny ended around 48 million years ago, the accretion of the Siletzia terrane began in the Pacific Northwest.
This began the volcanic activity in the Cascadia subduction zone, forming the modern Cascade Range, lasted into the Miocene. Events here may relate to the ignimbrite flare-up of Range; as extension in the Basin and Range Province slowed by a change in North American Plate movement circa 7 to 8 Million years ago, rifting began on the Gulf of California. Although many of the ranges do share a common geologic history, the Pacific Coast Ranges province is not defined by geology, but rather by geography. Many of the various ranges are composed of distinct forms of rock from many different periods of geological time from the Precambrian in parts of the Little San Bernardino Mountains to 10,000-year-old rock in the Cascade Range. For one example, the Peninsular Ranges, composed of Mesozoic batholitic rock, are geologically extr
A. C. McClurg
A. C. McClurg was a stationer and book wholesaler for over 120 years in Chicago, Illinois; the business began in 1844, as Chicago's first stationery store and changed hands several times as the result of a fire. Alexander McClurg came into management of the business at the time of the Great Chicago Fire and established an interest in fine literature, pursued by the company until late in the first decade of the 20th century. While pursuing interests in fine English literature and the literary magazine, The Dial one of the most important books published by McClurg's "Rare Books" section was W. E. B. Du Bois' The Souls of Black Folk. About a decade after McClurg's death, although the company kept his name, it shut down his Rare Books section of the business and pursued popular adventure most famously in the original publishing of the Tarzan of the Apes novels and other stories of Chicago author, Edgar Rice Burroughs, as well as Tom Mix stories. While these book proved successful, the business model changed again, from 1922 to 1962, A.
C. McClurg was a book wholesaler; the company was founded in Chicago, Illinois in 1844 as W. W. Barlow & Co. which soon changed names to S. C. Griggs & Co, it was known as Griggs, Bross & Co. after William Bross was admitted as a partner in 1848. Alexander C. McClurg, a former law student who moved to Chicago to join the mercantile trade, joined the company in 1859. McClurg joined Griggs as a junior partner; the company building was burned down in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. After the fire, Griggs sold his share of the company and it became Jansen, McClurg & Co. McClurg became senior partner in 1887 and the company took the name of A. C. McClurg & Co; the company was again destroyed in a fire in 1899. McClurg died in 1901. A. C. McClurg revitalized The Dial magazine in 1880 as a platform of literary criticism. Under Francis Fisher Browne, the magazine gained national prominence, but it was sold three years after Browne's death in 1913. In 1913, A. C. McClurg published its first Edgar Rice Burroughs Tarzan of the Apes book.
McClurg would publish the first ten novels of the series. By 1923, the company's operations focused on wholesaling; the company remained in business until 1962. Records of the A. C. McClurg Co. at The Newberry Library
Pinus strobus
Pinus strobus denominated the eastern white pine, northern white pine, white pine, Weymouth pine, soft pine is a large pine native to eastern North America. It occurs from Newfoundland, Canada west through the Great Lakes region to southeastern Manitoba and Minnesota, United States, south along the Appalachian Mountains and upper Piedmont to northernmost Georgia and very in some of the higher elevations in northeastern Alabama; the Native American Haudenosaunee denominated it the "Tree of Peace". It is known as the "Weymouth pine" in the United Kingdom, after Captain George Weymouth of the British Royal Navy, who brought its seeds to England from Maine in 1605. Pinus strobus is found in the nearctic temperate broadleaf and mixed forests biome of eastern North America, it prefers well-drained or sandy soils and humid climates, but can grow in boggy areas and rocky highlands. In mixed forests, this dominant tree towers over many others, including some of the large broadleaf hardwoods, it provides food and shelter for numerous forest birds, such as the red crossbill, small mammals such as squirrels.
Eastern white pine forests covered much of north-central and north-eastern North America. Only one percent of the old-growth forests remain after the extensive logging operations of the 18th century to early 20th century. Old growth forests, or virgin stands, are protected in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Other protected areas with known virgin forests, as confirmed by the Eastern Native Tree Society, include Algonquin Provincial Park, Quetico Provincial Park, Algoma Highlands in Ontario, Canada. Small groves or individual specimens of old growth eastern white pines are found across the range of the species in the USA, including in Ordway Pines, Maine. Many sites with conspicuously large specimens represent advanced old field ecological succession; the tall stands in Mohawk Trail State Forest and William Cullen Bryant Homestead in Massachusetts are examples. As an introduced species, Pinus strobus is now naturalizing in the Outer Western Carpathians subdivision of the Carpathian Mountains in Czech Republic and southern Poland.
It has spread from specimens planted as ornamental trees. Like most members of the white pine group, Pinus subgenus Strobus, the leaves are in fascicles of 5, or 3 or 4, with a deciduous sheath, they are flexible, bluish-green, finely serrated, 5–13 cm long, persist for 18 months, i.e. from the spring of one season until autumn of the next, when they abscise. The seed cones are slender, 8–16 cm long and 4–5 cm broad when open, have scales with a rounded apex and reflexed tip; the seeds are 4–5 mm long, with a slender 15–20 mm wing, are dispersed by wind. Cone production peaks every 3 to 5 years; the branches are spaced about every 18 inches on the trunk with 5-6 branches appearing like spokes on a wagon wheel. While eastern white pine is self-fertile, seeds produced this way tend to result in weak and malformed seedlings. Mature trees are 200–250 years old, some live to over 400 years. A tree growing near Syracuse, New York was dated to 458 years old in the late 1980s and trees in Michigan and Wisconsin were dated to 500 years old.
The eastern white pine has the distinction of being the tallest tree in eastern North America. In natural pre-colonial stands it is reported to have grown as tall as 70 m. There is no means of documenting the height of trees from these times, but eastern white pine may have reached this height on rare occasions. Greater heights have been reported in popular, but unverifiable, accounts such as Robert Pike's "Tall Trees, Tough Men". Total trunk volumes of the largest specimens are 28 m3, with some past giants reaching 37 or 40 m3. Photographic analysis of giants suggests volumes closer to 34 m3. Pinus strobus grows 1 m annually between the ages of 15 and 45 years, with slower height increments before and after that age range; the tallest presently living specimens are 50–57.55 m tall, as determined by the Native Tree Society. Three locations in southeastern United States and one site in northeastern United States have trees that are 55 m tall; the southern Appalachian Mountains have the most locations and the tallest trees in the present range of Pinus strobus.
One survivor is a specimen known as the "Boogerman Pine" in the Cataloochee Valley of Great Smoky Mountains National Park. At 57.55 m tall, it is the tallest measured tree in North America east of the Rocky Mountains. It has been measured by tape drop by the Native Tree Society. Before Hurricane Opal broke its top in October 1995, Boogerman Pine was 63 m tall, as determined by Will Blozan and Robert Leverett using ground-based measurements; the tallest specimens in Hartwick Pines State Park in Michigan are 45–48 m tall. In northeastern USA, 8 sites in 4 states have trees over 48 m tall, as confirmed by the Native Tre
Pinus albicaulis
Pinus albicaulis, known by the common names whitebark pine, white pine, pitch pine, scrub pine, creeping pine, is a conifer tree native to the mountains of the western United States and Canada subalpine areas of the Sierra Nevada, Cascade Range, Pacific Coast Ranges, Rocky Mountains from Wyoming northwards. It shares the common name "creeping pine" with several other plants; the whitebark pine is the highest-elevation pine tree found in these mountain ranges and marks the tree line. Thus, it is found as krummholz, trees growing close to the ground that have been dwarfed by exposure. In more favorable conditions, the trees may grow to 29 meters in height. Whitebark pine is a member of the white pine group, the Pinus subgenus Strobus, the section Strobus; this distinguishes whitebark pine and its relatives from the lodgepole pine, with two needles per fascicle, as well as the ponderosa pine and Jeffrey pine, which both have three needles per fascicle. Distinguishing whitebark pine, from the related limber pine a member of the white pine group, is much more difficult, requires seed or pollen cones.
In Pinus albicaulis, the seed-bearing female cones are 4–7 centimeters long, dark purple when immature, do not open on drying, but the scales break when they are removed by the Clark's nutcracker to harvest the seeds. Its pollen cones are scarlet. In Pinus flexilis, the cones are 6–12 centimeters long, green when immature, open to release the seeds, their pollen cones are yellow, there are intact old cones found beneath them. Whitebark pine can be hard to distinguish from the western white pine in the absence of cones. However, whitebark pine needles are entire. Whitebark pine needles are usually shorter, 4–7 centimeters long, though still overlapping in size with the larger 5–10 centimeters needles of the western white pine; the whitebark pine is an important source of food for many granivorous birds and small mammals, including most the Clark's nutcracker, the major seed disperser of the pine. Clark's nutcrackers each cache about 30,000 to 100,000 seeds each year in small scattered caches under 2 to 3 cm of soil or gravelly substrate.
Nutcrackers retrieve these seed caches during times of food scarcity. Cache sites selected by nutcrackers are favorable for germination of seeds and survival of seedlings; those caches not retrieved by the time the snow melts contribute to forest regeneration. Whitebark pine grows in clumps of several trees, originating from a single cache of two to 15 or more seeds. Other animals depend upon the whitebark pine. Douglas squirrels store whitebark pine cones in their middens. Grizzly bears and American black bears raid squirrel middens for whitebark pine seeds, an important pre-hibernation food. Squirrels, northern flickers, mountain bluebirds nest in whitebark pines, elk and blue grouse use whitebark pine communities as summer habitat; the whitebark pine has been classified as endangered by the IUCN. Severe population decline in whitebark pine communities is attributed to various causes, most infection with white pine blister rust, recent outbreaks of mountain pine beetles, disturbances in wildland fire ecology, forest succession, climate change.
A study in the mid-2000s showed that whitebark pine had declined by 41 percent in the western Cascades due to two primary threats: blister rust and pine beetles. Whitebark deaths in North Cascades National Park doubled from 2006 to 2011. Many stands of Pinus albicaulis across the species entire natural range are infected with white pine blister rust, a fungal disease introduced from Europe. In the northern Rocky Mountains of the United States, whitebark pine mortality in some areas exceeds 90 percent, where the disease infests nearly 143,000 acres. Cronartium ribicola occurs in whitebark pine to the northern limits of the species in the coastal ranges of British Columbia and the Canadian Rocky Mountains; the blister rust has devastated the commercially valuable western white pine in these areas and made serious inroads in limber pine populations as well. Nearly 80 percent of whitebark pines in Mount Rainier National Park are infected with blister rust. There is no effective method for controlling the spread and effects of blister rust.
However, a small number of trees in most populations harbor genetic resistance to blister rust. Restoration efforts undertaken by the U. S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service in the northern Rocky Mountains involve harvesting cones from and known resistant whitebark pines, growing seedlings, outplanting seedlings in suitable sites. In California, where the blister rust is far less severe, whitebark pine is still common in the High Sierras. Unusually large outbreaks of mountain pine beetle, a species of bark beetle native to western North America, have contributed significa
David Douglas (botanist)
David Douglas was a Scottish botanist, best known as the namesake of the Douglas-fir. He worked as a gardener, explored the Scottish Highlands, North America, Hawaii, where he died. Douglas was born in Scone, the second son of John Douglas, a stonemason, Jean Drummond, he attended Kinnoull School and upon leaving found work as an apprentice to William Beattie, head gardener at Scone Palace, the seat of the Earl of Mansfield. He spent seven years in this position, completing his apprenticeship, spent a winter at a college in Perth to learn more of the scientific and mathematical aspects of plant culture. After a further spell of working in Fife he moved to the Botanical Gardens of Glasgow University and attended botany lectures. William Jackson Hooker, Garden Director and Professor of Botany, was impressed with him and took him on an expedition to the Highlands before recommending him to the Royal Horticultural Society of London. Douglas made three separate trips from Britain to North America.
His first trip, to eastern North America, began on 3 June 1823, with a return in the late autumn of 1823. The second was to the Pacific Northwest, from July 1824 returning October 1827, his third and final trip started in England in October 1829. On that last journey he went first to the Columbia River to San Francisco in August 1832, to Hawaii. In October 1832 he returned to the Columbia River region. A year in October 1833, he returned to Hawaii, arriving on 2 January 1834; the second expedition starting in 1824 was his most successful. The Royal Horticultural Society sent him back on a plant-hunting expedition in the Pacific Northwest that ranks among the great botanical explorations. In the spring of 1826, David Douglas was compelled to climb a peak near Athabasca Pass to take in the view. In so doing, he became the first mountaineer in North America, he introduced the Douglas-fir into cultivation in 1827. Other notable introductions include Sitka Spruce, Sugar Pine, Western White Pine, Ponderosa Pine, Lodgepole Pine, Monterey Pine, Grand Fir, Noble Fir and several other conifers that transformed the British landscape and timber industry, as well as numerous garden shrubs and herbs such as the Flowering currant, Lupin and California poppy.
His success was well beyond expectations. Altogether he introduced about 240 species of plants to Britain, he first visited Hawaii in 1830 on his way to the Pacific Northwest. He returned again in December 1833 intending to spend three months of winter there, he was only the second European to reach the summit of the Mauna Loa volcano. He died under mysterious circumstances while climbing Mauna Kea in Hawaiʻi at the age of 35 in 1834, he fell into a pit trap and was crushed by a bull that fell into the same trap. He was last escaped convict. Gurney was suspected in Douglas's death, as Douglas was said to have been carrying more money than Gurney subsequently delivered with the body. However, most investigators have concluded. Douglas was buried in an unmarked common grave near Mission House in Hawaii. In 1856, a marker was erected on an outside wall at Kawaiahaʻo Church. A monument was built at the spot where Douglas died by members of the Hilo Burns Society including David McHattie Forbes, it is called Ka lua kauka, off Mānā Road on the Island of Hawaiʻi 19°53′17″N 155°20′17″W.
A small stand of Douglas-fir trees has been planted there. Although the common name Douglas-fir refers to him, the tree's scientific name, Pseudotsuga menziesii, honours a rival botanist, Archibald Menzies. Several Hawaiian plants were named after him in earlier taxonomies, such as Pandanus tectorius known in Hawaiian as hala, sometimes given the name Pandanus douglasii. A species of "horned toad", Phrynosoma douglasii, is named in honor of David Douglas. Over eighty species of plants and animals have douglasii in his honour, he introduced several hundred plants to Great Britain and hence to Europe. There is a memorial to David Douglas in his birthplace of Scone. David Douglas High School and the David Douglas School District in Portland, Oregon are named after him. Remnants of a greenhouse built by David Douglas can be seen in Surrey. In Vancouver, Washington, he is remembered via David Douglas Park, used during World War II as interim housing for the Kaiser Shipyard workers living in little silver trailers, giving the area the brief nickname during the era of "Trailer Terrace Park."
Douglas, David. Journal kept by David Douglas during his travels in North America 1823–1827: together with a particular description of thirty-three species of American oaks and eighteen species of Pinus, with appendices containing a list of the plants introduced by Douglas and an account of his death in 1834. W. Wesley & Son under the direction of the Royal Horticultural Society. Available online through the Washington State Library's Classics in Washington History collection A documentary film, Finding David Douglas tells the story of his life and achievements. David Douglas had a son, named David Finlay. David Finlay, recorded as being an interpreter, died in April 1850 at the hands of Black-feet raiders, he lived in Montana, an area where Douglas had spent long periods of time over 20 years which would tie in with the age of his son, who died
