Charles Plumier

Charles Plumier (April 20, 1646-November 20, 1704) was a French botanist, after whom the genus Plumeria (originally named Plumiera) is named.

Accomplishments

He is considered the most important of the botanical explorers of his time. All natural scientists of the eighteenth century spoke of him with admiration. Tournefort and Linnæus named in his honour the genus Plumiera, which belongs to the family of the Apocynace? and is indigenous in about forty species to Central America; it is now called Plumeria with the name of Plumeroide? for its first sub-family.

Related Topics:
Linnæus - Central America - Plumeria

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• The standard botanical author abbreviation Plum. is applied to the species he described.
• Plumier identified and described the Fuchsia, which he discovered on the island of Hispaniola in the Caribbean in 1696-7. He published his first description of the Fuchsia (Fuchsia triphylla, flore coccineo) in 1703.
• The French explorer and botanist Louis Feuillée had been one of his pupils.
• His first work was, "Description des plantes de l'Amérique" (Paris, 1693); it contained 108 plates, half of which represented ferns. This was followed by "Nova plantarum americanarum genera" (Paris, 1703-04), with 40 plates; in this work about one hundred genera, with about seven hundred species, were redescribed. At a later date Linnæus adopted in his system, almost without change, these and other newly described genera arranged by Plumier. Plumier left a work in French and Latin ready to be printed entitled "Traité des fougères de l'Amérique" (Paris, 1705), which contained 172 excellent plates. The publication "Filicetum Americanum" (Paris, 1703), with 222 plates, was compiled from those already mentioned. Plumier also wrote another book of an entirely different character on turning, "L'Art de tourner" (Lyons, 1701; Paris, 1749); this was translated into Russian by Peter the Great; the manuscript of the translation is at St. Petersburg.
• At his death Plumier left thirty-one manuscript volumes containing descriptions, and about 6000 drawings, 4000 of which were of plants, while the remainder reproduced American animals of nearly all classes, especially birds and fish. The botanist Boerhave had 508 of these drawings copied at Paris; these were published later by Burmann, Professor of Botany at Amsterdam, under the title: "Plantarum americanarum, quas olim Carolus Plumierus detexit", fasc. I-X (Amsterdam, 1755-60), containing 262 plates. Plumier also wrote treatises for the "Journal des Savants" and for the "Mémoires de Trévoux". By his observations in Martinique, Plumier proved that the cochineal belongs to the animal kingdom and should be classed among the insects.