It was the Scottish botanist David Douglas who gave his name to the Douglas-fir when he first introduced the tree into cultivation in 1826.

Originally it gave 19th century botanists a dilemma in classification it being similar to Pinus, Picea, Abies, Tsuga, and even Sequoia genus. Douglas-firs were finally placed in the new genus Pseudotsuga (meaning "false Tsuga") by the French botanist Carrière in 1867. The hyphen in Douglas-fir indicates that they are not true firs.

The huge evergreen trees grow up to 120m tall in North America - second in height only to the Coast Redwood. There the species is Pseudotsuga menziesii, named after another Scott, Archibald Menzies (a physician and rival naturalist to David Douglas) who first documented the tree on Vancouver Island in 1791. There are essentially two varieties - Coast or Green Douglas-fir on the Pacific and Rocky Mountain or Interior Douglas-fir. The latter is made up of  two sub-varieties, Colorado or Blue Douglas-fir and Fraser River or Gray Douglas-fir. The wood for our new vat is Gray Douglas-fir from British Columbia, Canada.

The species is generally known as Douglas-fir, but it is also known as Oregon Douglas-fir. Being the state tree of Oregon, it is also known as Oregon Pine.