William Kerr (died 1814) was a Scottish gardener and plant hunter, the first Western professional full-time

plant collector Plant collecting is the acquisition of plant specimens for the purposes of research, cultivation, or as a hobby. Plant specimens may be kept alive, but are more commonly dried and pressed to preserve the quality of the specimen. Plant collecting i ...

active in

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

. He also collected in

Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's List ...

and

Luzon Luzon (; ) is the largest and most populous island in the Philippines. Located in the northern portion of the Philippines archipelago, it is the economic and political center of the nation, being home to the country's capital city, Manila, as ...

in the

Philippines The Philippines (; fil, Pilipinas, links=no), officially the Republic of the Philippines ( fil, Republika ng Pilipinas, links=no), * bik, Republika kan Filipinas * ceb, Republika sa Pilipinas * cbk, República de Filipinas * hil, Republ ...

. Among the plants he sent back to

Kew Gardens Kew Gardens is a botanical garden, botanic garden in southwest London that houses the "largest and most diverse botany, botanical and mycology, mycological collections in the world". Founded in 1840, from the exotic garden at Kew Park, its li ...

was the vigorous shrub, at first cosseted in greenhouses, named in his honour, '' Kerria''. Kerr sent back to Britain examples of 238 plants new to European gardeners and to science, without, it appears, stirring far from the European trading sites of Canton and

Macao Macau or Macao (; ; ; ), officially the Macao Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (MSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China in the western Pearl River Delta by the South China Sea. With a pop ...

, or

Manila Manila ( , ; fil, Maynila, ), officially the City of Manila ( fil, Lungsod ng Maynila, ), is the capital of the Philippines, and its second-most populous city. It is highly urbanized and, as of 2019, was the world's most densely populate ...

. A native of

Hawick Hawick ( ; sco, Haaick; gd, Hamhaig) is a town in the Scottish Borders council area and historic county of Roxburghshire in the east Southern Uplands of Scotland. It is south-west of Jedburgh and south-south-east of Selkirk. It is one of ...

in the

Scottish Borders The Scottish Borders ( sco, the Mairches, 'the Marches'; gd, Crìochan na h-Alba) is one of 32 council areas of Scotland. It borders the City of Edinburgh, Dumfries and Galloway, East Lothian, Midlothian, South Lanarkshire, West Lothi ...

, he was a gardener at Kew, where he was noted by

Sir Joseph Banks Sir Joseph Banks, 1st Baronet, (19 June 1820) was an English naturalist, botanist, and patron of the natural sciences. Banks made his name on the 1766 natural-history expedition to Newfoundland and Labrador. He took part in Captain James C ...

, and, following instruction by Banks, sent to China in 1804. He remained eight years. Kerr's finds, discovered in local Chinese gardens and plant nurseries, included ''

Euonymus japonicus ''Euonymus japonicus'' (evergreen spindle or Japanese spindle) is a species of flowering plant in the family Celastraceae, native to Japan, Korea and China. It is an evergreen shrub or small tree growing to tall, with opposite, oval leaves 3� ...

'', ''

Lilium lancifolium ''Lilium lancifolium'' (syn. ''L. tigrinum'') is an Asian species of lily, native to China, Japan, Korea, and the Russian Far East. It is widely planted as an ornamental because of its showy orange-and-black flowers, and sporadically occurs as ...

'', ''

Pieris japonica ''Pieris japonica'', the Japanese andromeda or Japanese pieris, is a species of flowering plant in the heath family Ericaceae. It is native to eastern China, Taiwan, and Japan, where it grows in mountain thickets. This medium-sized evergreen shru ...

'', ''

Nandina domestica ''Nandina domestica'' ( ) commonly known as nandina, heavenly bamboo or sacred bamboo, is a species of flowering plant in the family Berberidaceae, native to eastern Asia from the Himalayas to Japan. It is the only member of the monotypic genus ...

'', ''

Begonia grandis ''Begonia grandis'', the hardy begonia, is a species of flowering plant in the family Begoniaceae. This herbaceous perennial has alternate, simple leaves on arching stems. The flowers are pink or white, borne in dichotomously branching cymes ...

'' and the white-flowered ''

Rosa banksiae ''Rosa banksiae'', common names Lady Banks' rose, or just Banks' rose, is a species of flowering plant in the rose family, native to central and western China, in the provinces of Gansu, Guizhou, Henan, Hubei, Jiangsu, Sichuan and Yunnan, at alti ...

'', named for his patron's wife. Sent to

Colombo, Ceylon Colombo ( ; si, කොළඹ, translit=Koḷam̆ba, ; ta, கொழும்பு, translit=Koḻumpu, ) is the executive and judicial capital and largest city of Sri Lanka by population. According to the Brookings Institution, Colombo m ...

in 1812, to be superintendent of gardens on Slave Island and at King's House, he died there in 1814, unable "to prosecute his work in consequence of some evil habits he had contracted, as unfortunate as they were new to him," as a notice in ''

The Chinese Repository ''The Chinese Repository'' was a periodical published in Canton between May 1832 and 1851 to inform Protestant missionaries working in Asia about the history and culture of China, of current events, and documents. The world's first major journal o ...

'' reportedQuoted Eliot Tozer, "On the trail of E.H. Wilson," ''Horticulture'' November 1994:51. some time after his premature death, apparently alluding to

opium Opium (or poppy tears, scientific name: ''Lachryma papaveris'') is dried latex obtained from the seed capsules of the opium poppy ''Papaver somniferum''. Approximately 12 percent of opium is made up of the analgesic alkaloid morphine, which i ...

addiction.

Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kerr, William Scottish botanists 1814 deaths Year of birth missing