François André Michaux

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François André Michaux

François André Michaux (born August 16, 1770 in Satory near Versailles , † October 23, 1855 ) was a French botanist . Its official botanical author abbreviation is " F.Michx. "

Life

In 1785, François André Michaux went to the USA with his father, the botanist André Michaux (1746-1802), where he was supposed to collect plants for the royal botanical garden. The father founded a tree nursery in Hackensack (New Jersey) for export to France. From 1787 Francois Andre Michaux headed a branch of the nursery in Charleston (South Carolina) . He traveled for research purposes in the Tennessee Valley, the Allegheny Mountains , Florida and the Bahamas (where the British interned him temporarily when they picked up his ship). In 1790 Michaux returned to France to study medicine. He then took part in the French Revolution. His father returned in 1796 (with his son helping him cultivate the trees he had brought with him) and died in 1802 on an expedition in Madagascar. In the same year, at the request of the French government, the son went back to the USA to close the tree nursery. He traveled from Charleston, where his ship arrived in October 1801, to New Jersey, whose woods he roamed with David Hosack and on that occasion visited Hosack's new Elgin Botanic Garden in New York, visited Philadelphia (where he visited the arboretum of William Hamilton in Woodlands), Pennsylvania, Kentucky, and Tennessee, and returned to France in late 1803. He was back in the United States in 1806, exploring the east coast from Maine to Georgia and the Great Lakes in 1809. Then he went back to France.

Michaux was the author of the most important book on trees in North America in the 19th century, which was published in Paris from 1810 to 1813. Illustrators included Pierre-Joseph Redouté, Henri Redouté, Pancrace Bess and, for the supplement, Thomas Nuttall (curator of the Harvard University Botanical Garden).

From 1820 to 1855 he was head of the research station of the Société Centrale de l'Agriculture. In this capacity, he founded an arboretum in 1833 on the grounds of Harcourt Castle . It still exists today.

He was Mayor of Vauréal (Val-d'Oise) from 1834 to 1840 and from 1846 to 1855 .

Quercus palustris from The North American Sylva von Michaux, 1859

He was a Knight of the Legion of Honor and a member of the American Philosophical Society (1809) and a corresponding member of the Académie des sciences (1816).

Honors

The genus Michauxia L'Hér. from the bellflower family (Campanulaceaea) is named after Michaux. The basket oak ( Quercus michauxii Nutt. ) Is also named in his honor.

Fonts

  • Histoire des Arbes forestiers del'Amerique, 3 volumes, Paris: L. Haussmann et d'Hautel, 1810 to 1813
    • English edition: The North American Sylva, or, a description of the forest trees of the United States, Canada, and Nova Scotia. Considered particularly with respect to their use in the arts and their introduction into commerce. To which is added a description of the most useful of the European forest trees, 1818/19, new edition Philadelphia: Robert Smith 1852 (with 156 plates, translated by Augustus Lucas Hillhouse; a four-volume edition with 121 additional plates of trees from the Rocky Mountains and Pacific Coast, the Midwest and Michaux Overlooked Styles by Thomas Nuttall appeared in 1853) digitized version
  • Voyage à l'ouest des monts Alléghanys dans les États de l'Ohio, du Kentucky et du Tennessee, et retour à Charleston par les Hautes-Carolines ... entrepris pendant l'an X, Paris: Levrault, Schoell et Cie, 1804
    • The book was also translated into English (1804) and German: Journey into the interior of the North American Free States west of the Alleghany Mountains, Weimar: FC pr. Landes 1805

literature

  • Jean-Marie Pelt: Avec les Michaux dans les forêts d'Amérique du Nord. In: La Cannelle et le panda: les grands naturalistes explorateurs autour du Monde, éd. Fayard 1999
  • H. Savage, EJ Savage: André and François-André Michaux. University Press of Virginia, 1986.
  • Régis Pluchet: André Michaux: le laboreur et l'explorateur. In: Hommes et Plantes, Winter 2005, Paris.
  • Régis Pluchet: François-André Michaux l'homme des arbres. In: Hommes et Plantes, Autumn 2007, Paris.

Web links

Commons : François André Michaux  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

References and comments

  1. ^ List of members since 1666: Letter M. Académie des sciences, accessed on January 23, 2020 (French).
  2. ↑ Lotte Burkhardt: Directory of eponymous plant names - Extended Edition. Part I and II. Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin , Freie Universität Berlin , Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-946292-26-5 doi: 10.3372 / epolist2018 .
  3. ↑ Swamp Chestnut Oak, pdf
personal data
SURNAME Michaux, François André
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French botanist
DATE OF BIRTH August 16, 1770
PLACE OF BIRTH Versailles
DATE OF DEATH October 23, 1855