Édouard Placide Duchassaing de Fontbressin (1819 in Moule, Guadeloupe – 1873 in

Périgueux Périgueux (, ; oc, Peireguers or ) is a commune in the Dordogne department, in the administrative region of Nouvelle-Aquitaine, southwestern France. Périgueux is the prefecture of Dordogne, and the capital city of Périgord. It is al ...

) was a French naturalist. He is noted for his work in

botany Botany, also called , plant biology or phytology, is the science of plant life and a branch of biology. A botanist, plant scientist or phytologist is a scientist who specialises in this field. The term "botany" comes from the Ancient Greek w ...

and spongiology. A native of Guadeloupe, he studied

zoology Zoology ()The pronunciation of zoology as is usually regarded as nonstandard, though it is not uncommon. is the branch of biology that studies the animal kingdom, including the structure, embryology, evolution, classification, habits, and ...

geology Geology () is a branch of natural science concerned with Earth and other astronomical objects, the features or rocks of which it is composed, and the processes by which they change over time. Modern geology significantly overlaps all other Ea ...

and medicine in

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...

. Afterwards, he returned to Guadeloupe as a physician, spending his free time conducting research of the island's flora. Subsequently, he visited several other islands of the

Antilles The Antilles (; gcf, label=Antillean Creole, Antiy; es, Antillas; french: Antilles; nl, Antillen; ht, Antiy; pap, Antias; Jamaican Patois: ''Antiliiz'') is an archipelago bordered by the Caribbean Sea to the south and west, the Gulf of Mex ...

, eventually relocating as a physician to Santa Marta, Panama (1848), from where he studied the natural history of the isthmus, sending his plant specimens to

Wilhelm Gerhard Walpers Wilhelm Gerhard Walpers (26 December 1816 in Mühlhausen – 18 June 1853 in Berlin) was a German botanist. This botanist is denoted by the author abbreviation when citing a botanical name. He received his education at the Universities of Greif ...

, a botanist in

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and List of cities in Germany by population, largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European Union by population within ci ...

(these specimens later became the property of

August Grisebach August Heinrich Rudolf Grisebach () was a German botanist and phytogeographer. He was born in Hannover on 17 April 1814 and died in Göttingen on 9 May 1879. Biography Grisebach studied at the Lyceum in Hanover, the cloister-school at Ilfe ...

).JSTOR Global Plants
biography Around 1850, he obtained a medical degree at

Copenhagen Copenhagen ( or .; da, København ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a proper population of around 815.000 in the last quarter of 2022; and some 1.370,000 in the urban area; and the wider Copenhagen metropolitan ar ...

, then settled in Saint Thomas of the

Danish West Indies The Danish West Indies ( da, Dansk Vestindien) or Danish Antilles or Danish Virgin Islands were a Danish colony in the Caribbean, consisting of the islands of Saint Thomas with ; Saint John ( da, St. Jan) with ; and Saint Croix with . The ...

. He remained in Saint Thomas for 15 years, during which time he performed extensive research of sponges and

coral Corals are marine invertebrates within the class Anthozoa of the phylum Cnidaria. They typically form compact colonies of many identical individual polyps. Coral species include the important reef builders that inhabit tropical oceans and ...

, collecting and describing a large number of species with Giovanni Michelotti (1812-1898). From 1867 onward, he lived in the Périgord region of France. The plant genus ''Duchassaingia'' (synonym '' Erythrina'', family Fabaceae) was named in his honor by Wilhelm Gerhard Walpers.

Selected publications

* ''Mémoire sur les coralliaires des Antilles'', 1860 (with Giovanni Michelotti). * ''Spongiaires de la Mer Caraibe'', 1864 (with Giovanni Michelotti). * ''Revue des zoophytes et des spongiaires des Antilles'', 1870.WorldCat Search
(publications)

References

External links

IPNI
List of plants described and co-described by Duchassaing de Fontbressin. 1819 births 1873 deaths People from Le Moule French naturalists 19th-century French botanists Spongiologists {{Guadeloupe-bio-stub