Background
André Michaux was born on 7 March 1746, in the park of Versailles, France, at Satory, a royal domain which had long been managed by his ancestors. His father died when the boy was seventeen.
André Michaux was a member of the Académie d'Agriculture.
André Michaux was a member of the French Academy of Sciences.
André Michaux was a member of the Académie d'Agriculture.
André Michaux was a member of the French Academy of Sciences.
https://www.amazon.com/Journal-Andr%C3%A9-Michaux-1793-1796/dp/1296580644/ref=sr_1_4?qid=1575872816&refinements=p_27%3AAndr%C3%A9+Michaux&s=books&sr=1-4&text=Andr%C3%A9+Michaux
1796
https://www.amazon.com/Flora-Boreali-americana-Sistens-Caracteres-Plantarum/dp/1279278692/ref=sr_1_18?qid=1575874323&refinements=p_27%3AAndr%C3%A9+Michaux&s=books&sr=1-18&text=Andr%C3%A9+Michaux
1803
https://www.amazon.com/Flora-Boreali-americana-Sistens-Caracteres-Plantarum/dp/127593546X/ref=sr_1_19?qid=1575874323&refinements=p_27%3AAndr%C3%A9+Michaux&s=books&sr=1-19&text=Andr%C3%A9+Michaux
1803
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1375544810/?tag=2022091-20
1809
(Journals and letters, translated from the original French...)
Journals and letters, translated from the original French, bring Michaux’s work to modern readers and scientists Known to today’s biologists primarily as the “Michx,” at the end of more than 700 plant names, André Michaux was an intrepid French naturalist. Under the directive of King Louis XVI, he was commissioned to search out and grow new, rare, and never-before-described plant species and ship them back to his homeland in order to improve French forestry, agriculture, and horticulture. He made major botanical discoveries and published them in his two landmark books, Histoire des chênes de l’Amérique (1801), a compendium of all oak species recognized from eastern North America, and Flora Boreali-Americana (1803), the first account of all plants known in eastern North America.
https://www.amazon.com/Andr%C3%A9-Michaux-North-America-1785-1797/dp/081732030X/ref=sr_1_1?qid=1575872816&refinements=p_27%3AAndr%C3%A9+Michaux&s=books&sr=1-1&text=Andr%C3%A9+Michaux
2020
Botanist explorer scientist silviculturist
André Michaux was born on 7 March 1746, in the park of Versailles, France, at Satory, a royal domain which had long been managed by his ancestors. His father died when the boy was seventeen.
When ten years old, Michaux was sent to a pension but remained there only four years because his father wished to train him for the family tenancy. To relieve his despondency after the death of his wife, the young widower began the intensive study of botany. He first studied under Le Monnier at Montreuil, near Versailles. Michaux pursued his botanical studies with Bernard de Jussieu at the Trianon (1777) and then at the Jardin des Plantes.
In 1779, Michaux moved nearer the Jardin des Plantes and during the next two years herborized in England, the Auvergne, and the Pyrenees. Subsequently, he was appointed secretary to the French consul at Ispahan, Persia, but, spurred by that zeal for exploration which was his most salient characteristic, he abandoned this connection in order to wander (1782-1785) over much of the region between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, in which he collected many seeds and plants. On his return to France, his government directed him to make a study of the forest trees of North America, in order to ascertain the advisability of their introduction into France and their utility for naval construction. On the first of October 1785, he arrived in New York with his young son and Paul Saulnier, a journeyman gardener who later brought the Lombardy poplar to the United States. The next year and a half he spent in a study of the local flora and in the establishment of a nursery near Hackensack, New Jersey. In 1787, he moved to Charleston, South Carolina, purchased a plantation about ten miles from the city, and continued his search for interesting plants, especially for those which might be successfully cultivated. In the same year, he traveled extensively in the southern Appalachians and, during the next, invaded Spanish Florida. In 1789, he visited the Bahamas and also continued his explorations in the Carolina mountains. During this period he was interested in the distribution of ginseng and introduced among the mountaineers the idea of its commercial exploitation.
Shortly afterward the French Revolution cut off his support from the home government although, despite family traditions, Michaux appears to have espoused the republican cause. Perhaps the report of his son, who had previously returned to Paris, influenced him to some extent; half of the sixty thousand young trees which the Michaux had sent back had been presented by the Queen to the Austrian Emperor and the rest had been largely scattered or neglected. In 1792, the elder Michaux botanized in Canada and even visited the vicinity of Hudson Bay. On his return he interested the American Philosophical Society in a project for the exploration of the Far West by way of Missouri; some money was subscribed for the purpose, and he received instructions for the proposed journey from Thomas Jefferson. But during these negotiations, Edmond Charles Genet arrived in Charleston and entrusted Michaux with a commission for George Rogers Clark. Genet had asked Jefferson to grant permission to Michaux to act as consul in Kentucky, but Jefferson declined to grant an exequatur, giving him instead letters of introduction as a traveling scientist.
On July 15, 1793, Michaux left Philadelphia for his famous mid-western travels; his manuscript journals were published almost a century later. In April 1796, he returned to Charleston, rich in botanical data but exhausted in finances. Four months later, he sailed for France but was shipwrecked off Egmont, Holland, where some of his manuscripts were lost and his herbaria suffered damage. Despite a favorable reception in Paris, he failed to interest his government in further American explorations and finally accepted a commission as a naturalist on the Australian expedition of Captain Nicolas Baudin. They sailed from France on October 18, 1800, visited Teneriffe, and reached Mauritius on March 15, 1801. Michaux decided to leave the expedition in order to explore Madagascar. After some difficulty, he attained the larger island but trusted too well the physique which had withstood hardships in more temperate countries and succumbed to a tropical fever.
Michaux's great contributions to botany were his explorations and collections. Neither adventures among Arabian bandits nor arduous travel by foot and canoe with only Indians or backwoodsmen as companions gave favorable training for literary attainment, and his journals (or field notes) are crudely laconic. Michaux compiled the first flora for eastern America, mainly from his own specimens. He introduced many American plants into French horticulture and disseminated the camellia, silk tree, and tea olive in the Carolinas. Michaux’s success no doubt encouraged the French naturalists Louis Bosc and Palisot de Beauvois to visit America. His Histoire des chèenes de l’Amérique, illustrated with twenty plates, mostly by Redouté, inspired an interest in forestry that was furthered by his son.
(Journals and letters, translated from the original French...)
2020Not being involved in politics, Michaux suffered from the French Revolution because it deprived him of the financial support the royal government had provided him. Nevertheless, Michaux appears to have espoused the republican cause.
André Michaux was a member of the Académie d'Agriculture and the French Academy of Sciences.
In October 1769, Michaux married Cécile Claye, the daughter of a rich farmer near Beauce; she died eleven months later after the birth of their son, François André.
