Dawyck Botanic Garden: the Heron Wood cryptogamic project

Historical background Sir William Wright Smith gained his early botanical expertise via a lectureship at Edinburgh University and four years in India where he was Curator of the Government Herbarium at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Calcutta, Acting Director of the Botanical Survey of India and Director of the Lloyd Botanic Garden, Darjeeling, the Sikkim cinchona plantations and the quinine factory in Mungpoo. Whilst in India he gained invaluable botanical knowledge in expeditions to littleknown areas of the Himalayas, especially in Sikkim and the borders of India with Nepal, Tibet and with Bhutan. On his return to Edinburgh in 1911 he became Deputy Keeper of the Botanic Garden and in 1922 became Professor of Botany and Regius Keeper at the Botanic Garden (Matthews, 1957). Through his interests especially in the genus Rhododendron, one of his chosen genera of study in his later years, he was well acquainted with the best horticultural collections in Scotland, indeed in many cases it was after discussion with him that many of these plantings were instigated. One of these prize collections was on an estate in the Scottish Borders, which boasted specimens collected by David Douglas in North America, some of the first plantings of exotic European trees and many, then recently introduced, Chinese woody plants. This same estate possessed an extraordinary wood where you could find flesh, fish and fruit all on the same tree, a mythical wood commented on in several histories of the Borders, including 1715 papers belonging to Dr Alexander Penicuik. The myth was enhanced by the fact that Merlin, King Arthur's magician, is reputed to be buried quite close at Drumelzier. The story of the extraordinary wood results from the fact that nearly 300 years ago there was a heronry in the pear orchard and these birds fished for eels and trout in the nearby Tweed and took them back to their nests; some eels escaped and so were seen in the wood trying to return to the river. These, with the pears and the herons, which have been eaten in historic times, provided the myth and the wood became known as Heron Wood! The wood is on the slopes of a stream issuing from heathland and hill-pasture known as The Scrape Burn and is now an integral part of the Dawyck Botanic Garden, an out station of the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh, situated less than 60 km from Edinburgh in the Borders, approximately equidistant from Glasgow and Edinburgh. Dawyck Botanic Garden is situated in a track of agricultural policies near