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.

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.