James Dugal (or Dougal) Cameron Lamb, horticulturalist, was trained as a
gardener at the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew, near London. He came to the
Cape of Good Hope before 1880 as gardener and estate manager at Belmont Park
House, Rondebosch, where he remained until 1918, when the property was sold and
he reached the age of 65. He then became a garden designer and nurseryman in
Cape Town. On 30 September 1880, in Rondebosch, he married Mary Anne Day, with whom he had two daughters.
Lamb was a member of the Mountain Club of South Africa from
1898 to 1923 and during this period collected flowering plants, geological
specimens and other natural history material. He collected some 4000 plants,
mainly in the Western Cape, but some as far afield as Zimbabwe, Botswana,
Mafikeng and Benoni. A collection of more than 1000 of his best specimens was presented to the Compton Herbarium, Cape Town, in 1932. He was a good friend of H.W. Rudolf Marloth* and was acquainted with Harry Bolus* and Professor Peter MacOwan*.
