Louis Bouton

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Louis Sulpice Bouton (born January 12, 1800 , other sources 1799 in Mauritius , † November 24, 1878 in Pamplemousses , Mauritius) was a Franco-Mauritian botanist. Its official botanical author abbreviation is " Bouton ".

Life

Bouton was the son of Louis Achille Bouton and Jeanne Celeste Leblanc. Already at an early age he was interested in natural history, especially botany, and by 1820 he had amassed an extensive natural history collection. In 1824 he married Eliza Le Marchand, the daughter of a doctor, in Port Louis. On August 11, 1829, he was one of the founding members of the Société d'Histoire naturelle de l'île Maurice, alongside Charles Telfair , Wenceslas Bojer , Jacques Delisse , Julien Desjardins , François Liénard de la Mivoye , Adrien d'Épinay and Jean-Baptiste Lislet Geoffroy . In 1830 he and Bojer founded the L'Herbier de Bouton in Port Louis , from which the Mauritius Herbarium emerged in 1960. When Julien Desjardins gave up his secretary post in 1839 and returned to France, Bouton was his successor. In this position he exerted a strong influence on the development of botany, zoology and forestry in Mauritius. In 1838, under Governor Sir William Nicolay , Bouton published an alarming pamphlet on the destruction of the forests in Mauritius, whereupon Ordinance Number 30 was passed in 1854, promoting the renewal of forest, river and mountain reserves. In 1845 Bouton drew attention to the dead wood in the Piton du Milieu and in other forests in the Savanne district and in the central plateau. Standing water collected around this dead wood, which led to the spread of mosquitoes and malaria. Frank Gleadow, a forest manager from India, was then commissioned to stop the malaria epidemic by reforesting with eucalyptus and pines. In December 1864 Bouton's best-known book Les Plantes Médicinales de l'Ile Maurice was published , which earned him the nickname "medicine man" and later became the standard work for subsequent botanists, pharmacologists and other scientists.

In 1880, two years after Bouton's death, the Royal Society of Arts and Sciences of Mauritius erected a stone pillar in Pamplemousses in recognition of his remarkable services. His name is also engraved on the Liénard obelisk in Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam Botanical Garden . This monument was erected in 1860 for those who helped improve agriculture in Mauritius.

Dedication names

In 1831 Julien Desjardins named the skinkart Cryptoblepharus boutonii in honor of Bouton. In 1838 Augustin-Pyrame de Candolle established the genus Boutonia with Boutonia cruspedata as the only species. This is now a synonym for Clerodendrum brunsvigioides Baker . In 1981 the French botanist Francis Friedmann honored Bouton with the plant species Trochetia boutoniana , which has been the national flower of Mauritius since 1992.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Official epitaph
  2. ^ JM Huron: Louis Sulpice Bouton. La requête de Louis Bouton. In: Proceedings of the Royal Society of Arts and Sciences of Mauritius, Volume 7, 2004, pp. 117-118