Wilson, Ernest Henry   (1876 - 1930)

Born on 15 February 1876 in Gloucestershire, England; died on 15 October 1930 in Worcester, Massachussetts, USA.

He left school early for employment at a local nursery in Warwickshire, as apprentice gardener, and, aged 16, at the Birmingham Botanical Gardens.

In 1897 he began work at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

He then accepted a position as Chinese plant collector with the firm of James Veitch & Sons, who were eager above all to retrieve the dove tree, Davidia involucrata.

Much has been written about his adventures in China, earning him the name 'Chinese Wilson'.

In subsequent years he became a collector for Sargent at the Arnold Arboretum, USA, and made further expeditions to China in 1907, 1908, and 1910, as well as to Japan 1911-1916.

He returned to Asia in 1917-1918, exploring in Korea and Formosa.

Upon return to the Arnold Arboretum in 1919 he was appointed Associate Director.

Three years later he set off for a two-year expedition that included Australia and New Zealand.

Wilson's travels took him to countries now known as Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Singapore, India, Sri Lanka, Kenya, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Zambia, and South Africa, before returning to England and then on to Boston.

He wrote about the horticultural aspects of this trip in various garden magazines, as well as in the first volume of his book Plant Hunting, published in 1927 (and reprinted decades later as Smoke that Thunders).

Australia

Wilson arrived in the port of Fremantle, on Australia's western coast, after a tedious and hot trip by boat from Sri Lanka (then Ceylon).

Wilson commented that he had travelled two thousand miles in Western Australia with Charles Lane-Poole "through all the important forest areas." and elsewhere, in "the sand plains and savannah regions," he was guided by Desmond Herbert, "the Western Australian government botanist".

His herbarium collections from Australia are now located at the Harvard University Herbaria on Divinity Avenue, Cambridge, MA, USA.

These specimens were almost entirely collected in Western Australia. Which is odd, as Wilson's diaries revealed that he had travelled by train across Australia after leaving Perth, and had visited Adelaide, Melbourne, and Sydney, where he spent Christmas in 1920. He then went into the New South Wales heartland, north into Queensland, and then eventually to Tasmania in April 1921, after a sojourn in New Zealand.

His diaries did give the names of plants collected, with collection numbers. Yet, there are none collected by Wilson from New South Wales or Victoria. This was a mystery.

The key was in a box of newspaper reports at Arnold Arboretum. An article described Wilson's "great disappointment" at losing much of the collection because the boat carrying two large consignments of photographic plates and specimens was lost at sea.

After Sargent's death in 1927, Wilson became 'Keeper' of the Arnold Arboretum. Three years later, his remarkable career was cut short when he and his wife were killed in an automobile accident on October 15, 1930 outside Worcester, Massachusetts.

A long article on Wilson's Australian collections by Margaret Grose can be seen here.

Source: Extracted from:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Henry_Wilson
Grose, Margaret 'Searching for Wilson's Expedition to Australia', Arnoldia - Volume 76, Issue 4 (2019).
Portrait Photo: May 15th 1922, Kew Gardens collection.

Collecting localities in Australia for 'Wilson, E.H.'. (2019)

Data from WA specimens in Harvard University Herbarium,
extracted from Margaret Grose's article (above)