British horticulturist, botanist and Quaker missionary from Darlington. Together with his brother Thomas, James Backhouse bought the Telford Nursery in Acomb, Yorkshire and changed the name of the company to the Backhouse Nursery (1816-1950), later being known as Backhouse & Sons. The nursery was innovative in garden design, and the brothers were considered to be leaders in the fashionable area of alpine gardening, constructing large and complex rock-gardens, some of which still survive. They both collected and imported plants, particularly from the Arctic and alpine areas of Europe.
As part of a mission (1831-1841) for the Society of Friends, Backhouse visited Australia (1832-1838), Mauritius and South Africa (1838-1840) with fellow Quaker G.W. Walker. In South Africa he collected locally including Table Mountain, sometimes with W.H. Harvey, while preparing for an expedition to the interior. Travelling by ox-wagon and later on horseback, he set out on 27 September 1838, travelling eastwards, and visited a number of mission stations. He met W. Hewetson at Fort Beaufort (11 January 1839), a local collector for W.H. Harvey, and Dr. W. Gill at Somerset East (22 May 1839), who collected for W.J. Hooker. Before his eventual return to Cape Town on 11 May 1840, his journey took him almost 10,000 km. He made numerous botanical observations, recorded in and later published from his diary, and sent specimens (mainly from Australia) to W.J. Hooker at Kew.
During the South African mission and on later visits to Europe, Backhouse made extensive collections of seeds and bulbs for his nursery in Yorkshire. He also purchased thousands of bulbs from the nurseryman Joseph Upjohn of Cape Town, after his return to England. With W.H. Harvey, he described the horticulturally important South African genus Schizostylis Backh. & Harv., though the original collector of the plants is not known. The Australian genus Backhousia Hook. & Harv. in the Myrtaceae was named to commemorate his discovery of Backhousia myrtifolia Hook. & Harv. Many species were named after him and cultivated plants originating from the Backhouse nursery bear cultivar names derived from the surname of the founder. His private herbarium was eventually incorporated with that of his son.
