James Donn – botanist and horticulturist – born in Perthshire in 1758. He began his study of gardening at Kew in London before appointment as curator of Cambridge University’s botanic garden in 1794 where he undertook the expansion of the gardens both quantitatively and qualitatively. His magnum opus was his Hortus Cantabrigiensis, which ran to some ten editions – this book began as a catalogue of the Cambridge University plant collection but become during its lifetime (1796-1845), an authoritative guide to world flora that could be found in British gardens. James Donn was made Fellow of the Linnaean Society of London a year before his death (in Cambridge) in 1813.
