Jean Baptiste Leschenault de la Tour
Encyclopedia
Jean Baptiste Louis Claude Theodore Leschenault de la Tour (November 13, 1773 – March 14, 1826) was a French
botanist and ornithologist.
Leschenault de la Tour was chief botanist on Nicolas Baudin
's expedition to Australia
between 1800 and 1803. He collected a great many new specimens in 1801 and 1802, though Baudin's journal suggests that he did not work particularly hard; apparently the poorly educated gardener's boy Antoine Guichenot
collected more plant specimens than Baudin did, and gave them more useful labels. In April 1803 he was so ill that he had to be put ashore at Timor
. Forced to spend the next three years on Java he used the time to make the first thorough botanical investigation of the island, which had not previously been visited by naturalists except briefly by Carl Peter Thunberg
. He arrived back in France
in July 1807 with a large collection of plant
s and bird
s.
Leschenault's Javanese birds were described by Georges Cuvier
and Louis Jean Pierre Vieillot
, and he also made his skins and notes available to Coenraad Jacob Temminck
. His plant collection resulted in his being granted a pension by the French government.
In May 1816 Leschenault travelled to India
to collect plants and establish a botanical garden
at Pondicherry. He was given permission by the British to travel through Madras
, Bengal
and Ceylon. He sent many of the plants and seeds he discovered to the French island of Réunion
to be cultivated. These included two varieties of sugar cane and six varieties of cotton
. He returned to France in 1822 and was awarded the Legion d'Honneur
.
Less than a year after his return Leschenault travelled to South America
, visiting Brazil
, Dutch Guiana
and French Guiana
, and introducing tea
bushes to Cayenne
, the capital of the French colony. He was forced to return home after only eighteen months due to ill health.
A number of birds were named after Leschenault, including Greater Sand Plover
Charadrius leschenaultii, White-crowned Forktail
Enicurus leschenaulti and Sirkeer Malkoha
Phaenicophaeus leschenaultii.
The plant genus Lechenaultia
is also named after him.
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
botanist and ornithologist.
Leschenault de la Tour was chief botanist on Nicolas Baudin
Nicolas Baudin
Nicolas-Thomas Baudin was a French explorer, cartographer, naturalist and hydrographer.Baudin was born a commoner in Saint-Martin-de-Ré on the Île de Ré. At the age of fifteen he joined the merchant navy, and at twenty joined the French East India Company...
's expedition to Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
between 1800 and 1803. He collected a great many new specimens in 1801 and 1802, though Baudin's journal suggests that he did not work particularly hard; apparently the poorly educated gardener's boy Antoine Guichenot
Antoine Guichenot
Antoine Guichenot or Guichenault was "gardener's boy" on the 1801—1803 French scientific voyage to Australia under Nicolas Baudin, and the 1817 voyage under Louis de Freycinet...
collected more plant specimens than Baudin did, and gave them more useful labels. In April 1803 he was so ill that he had to be put ashore at Timor
Timor
Timor is an island at the southern end of Maritime Southeast Asia, north of the Timor Sea. It is divided between the independent state of East Timor, and West Timor, belonging to the Indonesian province of East Nusa Tenggara. The island's surface is 30,777 square kilometres...
. Forced to spend the next three years on Java he used the time to make the first thorough botanical investigation of the island, which had not previously been visited by naturalists except briefly by Carl Peter Thunberg
Carl Peter Thunberg
Carl Peter Thunberg aka Carl Pehr Thunberg aka Carl Per Thunberg was a Swedish naturalist and an apostle of Carl Linnaeus. He has been called "the father of South African botany" and the "Japanese Linnaeus"....
. He arrived back in France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
in July 1807 with a large collection of plant
Plant
Plants are living organisms belonging to the kingdom Plantae. Precise definitions of the kingdom vary, but as the term is used here, plants include familiar organisms such as trees, flowers, herbs, bushes, grasses, vines, ferns, mosses, and green algae. The group is also called green plants or...
s and bird
Bird
Birds are feathered, winged, bipedal, endothermic , egg-laying, vertebrate animals. Around 10,000 living species and 188 families makes them the most speciose class of tetrapod vertebrates. They inhabit ecosystems across the globe, from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Extant birds range in size from...
s.
Leschenault's Javanese birds were described by Georges Cuvier
Georges Cuvier
Georges Chrétien Léopold Dagobert Cuvier or Jean Léopold Nicolas Frédéric Cuvier , known as Georges Cuvier, was a French naturalist and zoologist...
and Louis Jean Pierre Vieillot
Louis Jean Pierre Vieillot
Louis Jean Pierre Vieillot was a French ornithologist.Vieillot described a large number of birds for the first time, especially those he encountered during the time he spent in the West Indies and North America, and 26 genera established by him are still in use...
, and he also made his skins and notes available to Coenraad Jacob Temminck
Coenraad Jacob Temminck
Coenraad Jacob Temminck was a Dutch aristocrat and zoologist.Temminck was the first director of the National Natural History Museum at Leiden from 1820 until his death. His Manuel d'ornithologie, ou Tableau systematique des oiseaux qui se trouvent en Europe was the standard work on European birds...
. His plant collection resulted in his being granted a pension by the French government.
In May 1816 Leschenault travelled to India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
to collect plants and establish a botanical garden
Botanical garden
A botanical garden The terms botanic and botanical, and garden or gardens are used more-or-less interchangeably, although the word botanic is generally reserved for the earlier, more traditional gardens. is a well-tended area displaying a wide range of plants labelled with their botanical names...
at Pondicherry. He was given permission by the British to travel through Madras
Tamil Nadu
Tamil Nadu is one of the 28 states of India. Its capital and largest city is Chennai. Tamil Nadu lies in the southernmost part of the Indian Peninsula and is bordered by the union territory of Pondicherry, and the states of Kerala, Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh...
, Bengal
Bengal
Bengal is a historical and geographical region in the northeast region of the Indian Subcontinent at the apex of the Bay of Bengal. Today, it is mainly divided between the sovereign land of People's Republic of Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal, although some regions of the previous...
and Ceylon. He sent many of the plants and seeds he discovered to the French island of Réunion
Réunion
Réunion is a French island with a population of about 800,000 located in the Indian Ocean, east of Madagascar, about south west of Mauritius, the nearest island.Administratively, Réunion is one of the overseas departments of France...
to be cultivated. These included two varieties of sugar cane and six varieties of cotton
Cotton
Cotton is a soft, fluffy staple fiber that grows in a boll, or protective capsule, around the seeds of cotton plants of the genus Gossypium. The fiber is almost pure cellulose. The botanical purpose of cotton fiber is to aid in seed dispersal....
. He returned to France in 1822 and was awarded the Legion d'Honneur
Légion d'honneur
The Legion of Honour, or in full the National Order of the Legion of Honour is a French order established by Napoleon Bonaparte, First Consul of the Consulat which succeeded to the First Republic, on 19 May 1802...
.
Less than a year after his return Leschenault travelled to South America
South America
South America is a continent situated in the Western Hemisphere, mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere. The continent is also considered a subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean and on the north and east...
, visiting Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
, Dutch Guiana
Dutch Guiana
Dutch Guiana, also known as Netherlands Guyana or Dutch Guyana , is the name given to various Dutch colonies on the northern coast of South America, created by the Dutch West India Company...
and French Guiana
French Guiana
French Guiana is an overseas region of France, consisting of a single overseas department located on the northern Atlantic coast of South America. It has borders with two nations, Brazil to the east and south, and Suriname to the west...
, and introducing tea
Tea
Tea is an aromatic beverage prepared by adding cured leaves of the Camellia sinensis plant to hot water. The term also refers to the plant itself. After water, tea is the most widely consumed beverage in the world...
bushes to Cayenne
Cayenne
Cayenne is the capital of French Guiana, an overseas region and department of France located in South America. The city stands on a former island at the mouth of the Cayenne River on the Atlantic coast. The city's motto is "Ferit Aurum Industria" which means "Work brings wealth"...
, the capital of the French colony. He was forced to return home after only eighteen months due to ill health.
A number of birds were named after Leschenault, including Greater Sand Plover
Greater Sand Plover
The Greater Sand Plover, Charadrius leschenaultii, is a small wader in the plover family of birds. The spelling is commonly given as "Greater sandplover", but the official British Ornithologists' Union spelling is "Greater sand plover"....
Charadrius leschenaultii, White-crowned Forktail
White-crowned Forktail
The White-crowned Forktail is a species of bird in the Muscicapidae family.It is found in Bangladesh, Bhutan, Brunei, China, India, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam...
Enicurus leschenaulti and Sirkeer Malkoha
Sirkeer Malkoha
The Sirkeer Malkoha or Sirkeer Cuckoo , is a member of the cuckoo order of birds, the Cuculiformes, which also includes the roadrunners, the anis, and the Hoatzin. It is a resident bird in the Indian subcontinent....
Phaenicophaeus leschenaultii.
The plant genus Lechenaultia
Lechenaultia
Lechenaultia is a genus of plants in the Goodeniaceae family. Some species of this genus are used like ornamental plants. Lechenaultia species are diverse in form, they may appear as trees, shrubs, or small herbaceous plants....
is also named after him.
Further reading
- Biographies for Birdwatchers, Mearns and Mearns, ISBN 0-12-487422-3
- Nicolas Baudin’s Scientific Expedition To The Terres Australes by Steve Reynolds - Marine Life Society of South Australia Inc.
- Edward DuykerEdward DuykerEdward Duyker is an Australian historian and author born in Melbourne, Victoria, to a father from the Netherlands and a mother from Mauritius...
François Péron: An Impetuous Life: Naturalist and Voyager, Miegunyah/MUP, Melb., 2006, ISBN 978 0522 85260 8, - Fornasiero, Jean; Monteath, Peter and West-Sooby, John. Encountering Terra Australis: the Australian voyages of Nicholas Baudin and Matthew Flinders, Kent Town, South Australia, Wakefield Press, 2004. ISBN 1-86254-625-8
- Frank Horner, The French Reconnaissance: Baudin in Australia 1801—1803, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1987 ISBN 0522843395.
See also
- European and American voyages of scientific explorationEuropean and American voyages of scientific explorationThe era of European and American voyages of scientific exploration followed the Age of Discovery and were inspired by a new confidence in science and reason that arose in the Age of Enlightenment...