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Ernest H. Wilson (1876-1930)
The life of this plant hunter was full of adventure, and Wilson had many
close brushes with death. On one of six trips he made to remote areas of China
in the early 1900s, he broke his leg in a landslide. He splinted it with his
camera tripod, and was being carried down a narrow mountain trail when his party
encountered a mule train. To allow the mules to pass, he was laid across the
path and they stepped over him!
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The Indiana Jones of the plant world
Ernest H. Wilson was a "plant hunter" by trade. Born in England and
educated at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, he joined the staff of Harvard
University’s Arnold Arboretum. The first botanical explorer to find several
wild lilac species and subspecies, Wilson
travelled in Asia seeking out over 1,000 new garden plants. He introduced
Syringa oblata ssp. dilatata
(one of the ancestors of many popular cultivars)
and the unusual pinnate-leaved lilac, Syringa pinnatifolia.
Syringa pinnatifolia - 39K
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Introduction