William Lobb
William Lobb was a British plant collector, employed by Veitch Nurseries of Exeter, who was responsible for introducing to commercial growers Britain Araucaria araucana from Chile and the massive Sequoiadendron giganteum from North America.
He and his brother, Thomas Lobb, were the first collectors to be sent out by the Veitch nursery business, with the primary commercial aim of obtaining new species and large quantities of seed. His introductions of the monkey-puzzle tree, Wellingtonia and many other conifers to Europe earned him the sobriquet "messenger of the big tree". In addition to his arboreal introductions, he also introduced many garden shrubs and greenhouse plants to Victorian Europe, including Desfontainia spinosa and Berberis darwinii, which are still grown today.
Early life
Lobb was born in 1809 at Lane End, Washaway near Bodmin Cornwall and spent his early life at Egloshayle, near Wadebridge. He had four brothers and two sisters. Two of the brothers, Henry and James, became managers of gunpowder plants in south-west England. His father, John Lobb, was the estate carpenter at nearby Pencarrow where a notable garden had been developed by Sir William Molesworth. John developed a love of gardening and, after losing his place at Pencarrow, he took up employment at Carclew House, near Falmouth, the home of Sir Charles Lemon. Sir Charles would later be amongst the first people in England to receive and grow rhododendron seed from Sir Joseph Hooker, who had sent seed directly to Sir Charles from his Himalayan expedition of 1848–1850.William, along with his younger brother Thomas, worked in the stove-houses at Carclew where Sir Charles encouraged the Lobb boys in their study of horticulture and botany. In 1837, William was engaged by Mr Stephen Davey of Redruth, where he helped establish a "thoroughly efficient" horticultural establishment. From there, he moved on to become gardener to the Williams family at Scorrier House, near Falmouth. He gained a reputation as a keen amateur botanist and assembled a fine collection of dried specimens of British plants, particularly Cornish ferns, but had an increasing desire to travel abroad and to discover unknown "vegetation".
By the late 1830s, James Veitch had established his plant nursery at Mount Radford, Exeter and was looking for ways to extend the range of plants on offer, thus improving the profitability of the business. After correspondence with the eminent botanist Sir William Hooker about the most suitable destination, Veitch decided to employ his own plant hunter to gather exotic plants from South America exclusively for his nursery. William's brother Thomas had been employed by Veitch since 1830 and recommended William to Veitch. Veitch was impressed by William's keen manner and horticultural knowledge; according to the account in Hortus Veitchii, William:
was quick of observation, ready in resources, and practical in their application; he had devoted much of his leisure to the study of botany, in which considerable proficiency had been acquired.
Veitch decided that William, despite not being a trained botanist, would prove a steady, industrious and dependable collector. He therefore booked him a passage on HM Packet Seagull, which was to set sail from Falmouth on 7 November 1840, bound for Rio de Janeiro and Lobb thus became the first of a long line of plant collectors to be sent out by the Veitch family to all corners of the world. James Veitch was anxious to ensure that Lobb should not be "cramped for funds" and arranged for an annual allowance of £400 to be made available to draw on in the large cities along his planned itinerary.
Before his departure, Lobb visited Kew Gardens where he was taught how to make herbarium specimens by placing plant material between special papers.
South America (1840–1844)
Brazil and Argentina
Lobb took with him seeds of the early Rhododendron hybrid "Cornish Early Red" as a gift from Veitch to the new emperor of Brazil, Pedro II. The seeds were planted in the gardens of the Imperial Palace at Petrópolis where they are still growing today.Following his arrival at Rio de Janeiro, Lobb spent 1841 exploring the Serra dos Órgãos to the north-east of the port where he discovered several orchids including the swan orchid, Cycnoches pentadactylon, as well as Begonia coccinea and Passiflora actinia. His first shipment of discoveries, which arrived at Topsham dock in March 1841, also included a new species of Alstroemeria, an Oncidium, O. curtum, and a new red Salvia. There were also several species of the beautiful pink-flowered climber Mandevilla, including M. splendens, which would become highly sought after for cultivation in England, and the small shrub Hindsia violacea, with its clusters of ultramarine flowers, which quickly became popular in Victorian greenhouses. The next shipment arrived at Topsham in May but had been delayed at Rio de Janeiro and, as a result, many of the plants failed to survive the journey, arriving dead or "vegetated".
Later in 1841, Lobb travelled by boat to Argentina, where he spent the winter exploring the area around Buenos Aires. In January 1842, he sent back five cases of plants, seeds and dried specimens, but unfortunately the ship was unable to dock at Exeter as expected and continued on to Leith in Scotland, from where the packages eventually reached Exeter.
Lobb then travelled overland to Chile via Mendoza and the Uspallata Pass over the Andes, thus avoiding the perilous sea voyage around Cape Horn. Lobb found the journey through the mountains gruelling, having to travel through snow that he described as "five feet deep, frozen so hard that the mules made no impression and the cold was intense", causing him to collapse ill with fever on several occasions.
Chile
James Veitch's instructions to Lobb included a request to locate and bring back seeds of the Chile pine which had originally been introduced to Britain by Archibald Menzies in 1795. Veitch had seen a young specimen at Kew Gardens grown from seed brought back by the Horticultural Society's collector James McRae in 1826, and was convinced that this tree would be hugely popular as an ornamental plant.Once Lobb had recovered from the ordeal of his Andean crossing he left Valparaíso and travelled south by steamship to Concepción from where he set off to the forests of the Araucanía Region. At 5,250 feet, he reached his destination where the sought-after Araucaria araucana was growing on the exposed ridges below the snow-capped volcanic peaks of the southern Andes. Lobb collected over 3,000 seeds by shooting cones from the trees while his porters gathered fallen nuts from the ground. Lobb then returned to Valparaíso with the sacks containing the seeds and personally saw them onto a ship bound for England. The shipment arrived safely at Exeter and by 1843 Veitch was offering seedlings for sale at £10 per 100.
Unknown to his employers, Lobb also sent seeds back to his former employers, Sir Charles Lemon at Carclew and John Williams of Scorrier House, where a plantation of monkey-puzzle trees was grown.
During 1842, Lobb collected from the Valparaíso area and sent back seeds of a purple nasturtium climber, Tropaeolum azureum, which he located at "Cuesta Dormeda, about sixteen leagues from Valparaíso". He also sent the pale-blue mallow, Abutilon vitifolium, and the white, rosemary–scented Calceolaria alba, which was the forerunner of many Calceolarias which were to become popular as summer bedding plants.
Lobb then travelled by steamship to Talcahuano and then to Los Ángeles, from where he went inland towards the mountains following the Laja River upstream to the Antuco volcano. He then followed the Andes to Santa Bárbara regularly making excursions up to the snow line. Lobb found this expedition exhausting and the eventual shipment back to England was disappointing with only one significant new discovery, a magenta flowering perennial Calandrinia umbellata.
Lobb's travels then continued through northern Chile, where he discovered Desfontainia spinosa, before moving on through Peru to Ecuador.
Peru, Ecuador and Panama
En route, he collected the passion flower, Passiflora mollissima, which became popular in greenhouses, and the delicate Calceolaria amplexicaulis.In the spring of 1843, he took four cases of plants, which he had collected on the slopes of the Peruvian Andes, by sea to the Ecuadorian port of Guayaquil. While he was there, an epidemic of yellow fever broke out and, along with other European residents, he was forced to move to Puná Island until the epidemic was over, leaving his cases with a shipping agent to send to England. On leaving Puná, Lobb hired mules and a guide and travelled inland to Quito and on into southwestern Colombia.
He eventually reached the port of Tumaco, with a further collection of plants, from where he sailed for Panama intending to travel on with his latest finds back to England. On arriving at Panama City however, he received news from James Veitch that the cases of plants left in Guayaquil had never arrived. Lobb therefore despatched his latest collection from Panama and awaited instructions from Veitch.
Amongst the shipments from Panama were several orchids including Oncidium ampliatum collected near Panama City, described by Veitch in a letter to Hooker as arriving "quite fresh but others are rotten", a blue-azure Clitoria and a Lobelia, Centropogon coccineus, which he found growing "in shady places on the banks of the Chagres River" as well as seeds of several Fuchsias and Tropaeolum.
While waiting in Panama, Lobb continued to seek out new plants despite suffering from an attack of dysentery. Once he had recovered, he returned to Guayaquil where he discovered all his cases rotting in a corner of a warehouse, with much of the contents destroyed by ants. The agent explained that the cases had "quite escaped his notice". Lobb was able to rescue some of the seeds, bulbs and dried specimens which he sent to Exeter. Veitch replied by sending back a supply of glass to make new shipping cases and insisting that Lobb endeavour to replace everything that was lost.
Despite being exhausted from his travels and repeated attacks of ill health, Lobb returned to the interior of Peru for a further four months, finally arriving back in England in May 1844. On Lobb's return to Exeter, Veitch wrote to Hooker:
I was disappointed at hearing William Lobb had left Peru, but pleased to hear of his safe arrival in England with many plants and seeds in good order. He reached Exeter with his plants on Saturday and is now gone to his friends.
Amongst the dried samples sent back to England was one of Solanum lobbianum which was sent to Kew Gardens where it was labelled as "Lobb Columbia". It was named after its discoverer by Georg Bitter, the German expert on Solanum, based on the single specimen at Kew. For a long time there was some doubt about the actual location of the plant's discovery until it was re-discovered in Ecuador by an American expedition in the 1990s.