Charles Maries

[6] He left for Shanghai on 1 February 1877,[6] calling at Hong Kong and Ningbo (where he visited the mountains previously explored by Robert Fortune) en route and then went on to Japan, arriving at Nagasaki on 20 April.

According to the account in "Hortus Veitchii", whilst waiting at Aomori for a steamer to convey him to Hakodate on the island of Hokkaidō: Maries noticed a conifer new to him growing in a garden, and learnt that it could be found in quantity on a neighbouring mountain.

The following day he again made the ascent, but this time from the north side, and he succeeded in procuring cones of a new species, since named by Maxwell T. Masters, Abies mariesii.

[8]Nearby, Maries also re-discovered Abies sachalinensis, which had previously been identified by Carl Friedrich Schmidt, a German botanical traveller, on the Russian island of Sakhalin in 1866, but had not been introduced to Europe.

[8] Maries crossed to Hakodate on 20 June 1877[8] where he collected seeds of the beautiful Azalea rollisoni (Rhododendron indicum balsaminseflorum) which he dispatched to the Veitch Nurseries at Chelsea.

Fortunately, Maries had sufficient time to retrace his tracks and he managed to replace most of the missing seeds, which were successfully dispatched to London.

[9] He found penetrating the interior of the island difficult, and was only able to find a small amount of material, including seed of a new species of Lilium.

[10] Maries then returned to Shanghai, on mainland China, from where, in the spring of 1878, he visited Zhenjiang, Jiujiang and nearby Mount Lushan, where he discovered a white form of Daphne genkwa as well as Hamamelis mollis, Pseudolarix amabilis, Rhododendron fortunei and Loropetalum chinense.

In the Lushan Mountains, Maries visited the Temple of Teen Cha where he saw magnificent trees of Larix kaempferi, Cryptomeria japonica and Liriodendron chinense, as well as Lilium lancifolium formosanum.

[11] After spending the summer of 1878 back in Japan, where he collected seeds of conifers, he returned to China in December, basing himself at Hankou on the Yangtze River.

Maries returned to England in February 1880, when his herbarium was sent to the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and his collection of insects was accepted by the British Museum.

[13][14] Maries had left England before 1881 (his name does not appear in the 1881 census) to take up employment in India and in 1882, he was recommended by Sir Joseph Hooker to the post of Superintendent of the gardens of the Maharajah of Darbhanga, where he laid out the very extensive grounds which surround the palaces.