William Lobb

William Lobb was a Cornish plant collector employed by the Veitch nurseries to search the Americas for commercially valuable species. His expeditions introduced plants including the monkey puzzle tree and giant sequoia to wider British cultivation, though the work was arduous and often dangerous.

William Lobb was born in Cornwall and died in San Francisco. The career belongs to the wider history of exploration in which travel, geographical knowledge, imperial ambition and encounters with local societies were closely intertwined.

In Tracy Chevalier’s At the Edge of the Orchard, By 1853, their youngest son Robert has fled west and works among California’s giant sequoias and coastal redwoods, collecting seeds and specimens for the English plant hunter William Lobb.