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Curtis's Botanical Magazine, that wonderful source of botanical information presented in marvellous style, gives a description in 1847 of 'Anigozanthos fuliginosa'. It is already then remarked that this Black Kangaroo Paw is quite different from the other kinds of Anigozanthos (and later it received its own particular name: Macropidia fuliginosa, Sooty Bigfoot, I would say...).
Curtis's quotes from a recent letter received by the London Journal of Botany from James Drummond (1786/7-1863), the official botanist of the Swan River Colony (today called Perth):

'By a ship now about to sail, I send two fine species of Anigozanthos, collected by my son (since killed by the natives), in the vicinity of the Moore River... The dark-flowering one, of which but two specimens have ever been found in bloom, is a real mourning flower; the upper portions of its stem, and lower portion of the corolla being covered, as it were, with black velvet...'

Indeed, 'killed by the natives'... What that phrase might have meant to people in Britain at the time?!
But the story is a far more particular one than Drummond the elder's suggestion. His son Johnston (1820-1845) followed closely in the footsteps of his father. Already as a lad he was collecting and selling specimens and seeds of Australian plants. And he became an untiring explorer. On a trip with James to the Moore River (north of Perth), Johnston had found our plant in 1842. On their expeditions the Drummonds were accompanied by native helpers. One of these was one Kabinger and his (extended) family group. The Drummond sons were used to sleeping with native women, and this led to tragedy in 1845. On a short expedition, Johnston had been spending nights with Kabinger's wife. Kabinger - who'd earlier been accused of cattle-rustling - one night crept up on Johnston and killed him with his glass-tipped spears. A few weeks later, he was tracked down by one of Johnston's brothers, and shot dead...
Small wonder, then, that James Drummond for a while lost his appetite in collecting and botanising. His pain can be read in that excerpt above from his letter. A pain so great that he apparently had to make a general statement about the danger of 'natives'...

'... if the expense incurred by the Horticultural Society [of London] in Mr. Douglas's voyages had been attended with no other result than the introduction of this species, there would have been no ground for dissastisfaction.' Thus in understatement writes the secretary of the Society, John Lindley (1799-1865), in Edward's Botanical Register in 1830. The cost of that expedition had been 400 pounds (the wages of a maid in the early 1800s was about one pound a year).
David Douglas (1799-1834) was a Scot from Scone not far from Perth. After training as a gardener he came into the employ of the Royal Horticultural Society of London, which sent him to hunt for plants in the recently 'uncovered' territories of the Pacific Northwest of North America. The Douglas Fir is named after the young botanist, who came to a dreadful end on the slopes of the Mauna Kea (Hawai'i). He introduced over 200 plant species to England from the Americas.
Among these this amazing Purple-Flowered Currant.
Its seeds were received in London in October 1826 and they were planted in the Spring of 1828, and soon blossomed to everyone's delight. As can be seen from the above quotation.
Douglas himself is eloquent about this Ribes in his journal. That journal is a pleasure to read because he writes warmly and open-heartedly and entirely self-efffacingly about his finds. He gives full credit to others. In the case of Ribes sanguineum Douglas refers to Archibald Menzies (1754-1842), who'd first seen this Ribes at Nootka Sound on the west coast of Vancouver Island in 1787. And he also mentions the famous Lewis and Clarke Expedition who saw it in 1805, and its description in 1814. Not only a botanist, Douglas was an explorer as well and an undaunting mountaineer. And - judging from his journal - an accomplished diarist too.
This photo was taken on a rather dark and misty London morning so I used a flash.