André Michaux

André Michaux (born March 7, 1746, Satory, France—died November 13, 1802, Tamatave, Madagascar) was a French botanist who spent 12 years studying the plants of North America.

Early life and introduction to botany

Born into a farming family south of Versailles, France, Michaux was introduced to agriculture and plant cultivation at a young age by his father. He soon became proficient in nurturing plants that were tough to cultivate, which brought him to the notice of officials in King Louis XVI’s court. One such official, the king’s physician, suggested Michaux devote himself to botany after the death of Michaux’s young wife in 1769, a loss that left him devastated. Accepting this advice, Michaux began experimenting with the plants on his farm and later trained under botanist Bernard de Jussieu. Michaux’s enthusiasm for botany during his time at the Jardin du Roi (currently, Jardin des Plantes) in Paris impressed leading French plant scientists of the period, including André Thouin, and helped pave the way for his subsequent botanical expeditions.

Later life and botanical pursuits

From 1779 to 1781 Michaux traveled in England, Spain, and the Auvergne region of south-central France, studying the plants of these areas. In 1782 the French government sent him to Persia to collect plants and grains, which he brought back to France in 1785. He was then sent to North America as the king’s botanist to collect plants for the depleted forest of Rambouillet, southwest of Paris. He set up two gardens—one near Hackensack, New Jersey, and the other in Charleston, South Carolina—and stocked them with plants he collected from what are now the Southeastern and Midwestern states.

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While in America, Michaux developed a friendship with the North American botanist William Bartram, maintaining correspondence and exchanging seeds thereafter. The French botanist retraced Bartram’s route up the Savannah River, traveling from the coast to the mountains during one of his early journeys in the Carolinas. With the beginning of the French Revolution in 1787 Michaux lost his royal sponsorship. His plans to lead botanical expeditions west of the Mississippi River on behalf of the American Philosophical Society were disrupted when he became involved in a political scheme to secure Spanish-controlled Louisiana and New Orleans for France and became involved in the covert political mission of French emissary to the United States Edmond-Charles Genêt. When the mission failed, Michaux continued with his botanical expeditions, visiting North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois using his own money before setting sail for France. Shipwrecked on his return trip to Paris in 1797, he lost most of the plants he had collected. In 1800 he went to Madagascar, where he contracted a fever from which he died.

Contributions to science

Michaux is credited with introducing several Old World (encompassing Africa, Asia, and Europe) plants to America, such as the crape myrtle (Lagerstroemia indica), the tea plant (Camellia sinensis), and the camellia (C. japonica). However, there is some debate regarding their precise identification. He also described several North American plant species, including the bigleaf magnolia (Magnolia macrophylla), and introduced them to Europe. He recorded an account of his experiences in two books—Histoire des chênes de l’Amérique (1801; “Natural History of the Oaks of America”) and Flora Boreali-Americana (1803; “The Flora of North America”). His North American specimens are preserved at the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle (National Museum of Natural History) in Paris as a separate, historic collection—the Michaux herbarium.