Father of forestry

Augustine Henry (1857 – 1930), Ireland's greatest plant collector and botanical explorer, was born 150 years ago on the 2 of July 1857. Even though he was the archetypal absent-minded professor, he advanced through three brilliant careers, and made massive achievements in each. After hearing a recruitment speech delivered by Sir Robert Hart, in Belfast in 1879, he was inspired to travel to China. He trained as a physician, and was to spend 18 years working for the Imperial Chinese Customs Service, from 1881 to 1899.

Working as an expatriate doctor for the Customs Service was an ambiguous role in a turbulent point in China's history. Henry was based in the town of Ichang, where the great Yangtze River debouches from the famous Three Gorges. He took a great interest in traditional Chinese medicine, and indeed these were one of the most valuable commodities being traded down-river from land-locked Sichuan Province. Realising many of these plants lacked scientific names he set about cataloguing and collecting them, and thus brought about the fusion of Chinese and western botany. Lilium henryi, one of many fabulous plants he introduced to our gardens, will begin flowering in a few weeks time.

Returning to these islands he then proceeded to write an encyclopaedic work on the trees of Great Britain and Ireland that has never been superseded. In 1913 he became the first Professor of Irish Forestry at the College of Science, and established the fledgling forestry industry in this country.

His widow, Alice, summed his life up on a most pleasing headstone in Deansgrange: “He was the first to reveal by his travels and collections the surpassing richness and interest of the flora of western China. His work in the east has beautified the gardens of the West and his profound research has established on a scientific basis the study of all the trees that grow in Great Britain and Ireland”.

Augustine Henry's grave is just 240 yards inside the main entrance to Deansgrange, walking 80- yards beyond the end of the tarmac road he is by the path of the right hand side.