Abílio Fernandes (19 October 1906

Guarda, Portugal Guarda () is a city and a municipality in the District of Guarda and the capital of the Beiras e Serra da Estrela sub-region in Centro Region, central Portugal. The population in 2021 was 40,126, in an area of with 31,224 inhabitants in the city ...

– 16 October 1994

Coimbra Coimbra (, also , , or ) is a city and a municipality in Portugal. The population of the municipality at the 2011 census was 143,397, in an area of . The fourth-largest urban area in Portugal after Lisbon, Porto Metropolitan Area, Porto, and Bra ...

), was a Portuguese botanist and taxonomist from the Botanical Institute at the

University of Coimbra The University of Coimbra (UC; pt, Universidade de Coimbra, ) is a Public university, public research university in Coimbra, Portugal. First established in Lisbon in 1290, it went through a number of relocations until moving permanently to Coi ...

who was married to Rosette Mercedes Saraiva Batarda (1916–2005), another Portuguese botanist and taxonomist. Fernandes was a student of Aurélio Quintanilha (1892–1987), botanist and geneticist. He is noted for his work on

Amaryllidaceae The Amaryllidaceae are a family of herbaceous, mainly perennial and bulbous (rarely rhizomatous) flowering plants in the monocot order Asparagales. The family takes its name from the genus ''Amaryllis'' and is commonly known as the amaryllis fa ...

, and compiling floras of

Portugal Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic ( pt, República Portuguesa, links=yes ), is a country whose mainland is located on the Iberian Peninsula of Southwestern Europe, and whose territory also includes the Atlantic archipelagos of ...

Macaronesia Macaronesia (Portuguese: ''Macaronésia,'' Spanish: ''Macaronesia'') is a collection of four volcanic archipelagos in the North Atlantic, off the coasts of Africa and Europe. Each archipelago is made up of a number of List of islands in the At ...

and

Tropical Africa Although tropical Africa is mostly familiar to the West for its rainforests, this biogeographic realm of Africa is far more diverse. While the tropics are thought of as regions with hot moist climates, which are caused by latitude and the tropi ...

. He was the son of José Fernandes (1880-) and Maria Augusta Fernandes (1880–). Fernandes was Quintanilha's student during the academic year 1926–27 and was invited to become teaching assistant in 1927. He became interested in the number and form of chromosomes in different species, later specialising in cyto-systematics, founding and becoming head of a research programme on

cytotaxonomy Cytotaxonomy is the classification of organisms using comparative studies of chromosomes during mitosis. Description Cytotaxonomy is a branch of taxonomy that uses the characteristics of cellular structures to classify organisms. In cytotaxonomy, ...

at the University of Coimbra, where he stayed for the remainder of his career. Quintanilha stated that Fernandes's earliest works – including his thesis published in 1930, ''Study on the chromosomes of Liláceas and Amarilidáceas'' – are the first published in Portugal in which chromosomes were regarded as “carriers of the heritable characters”, representing thus “the beginning of a new branch of science among us,

cytogenetics Cytogenetics is essentially a branch of genetics, but is also a part of cell biology/cytology (a subdivision of human anatomy), that is concerned with how the chromosomes relate to cell behaviour, particularly to their behaviour during mitosis an ...

” Abílio Fernandes was married to the botanist Rosette Mercedes Saraiva Batarda (1 October 1916 – 28 May 2005) and had 2 sons Eduardo Manuel Batarda Fernandes (1943) and José António Batarda Fernandes (1946). Some of her work was published in ''

Flora Zambesiaca ''Flora Zambesiaca'' is an ongoing botanical project aimed at achieving a full account of the flowering plants and ferns of the Zambezi River basin covering Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Botswana and the Caprivi Strip, and is published by ...

'' and she did a taxonomic revision of the families

Avicenniaceae ''Avicennia'' is a genus of flowering plants currently placed in the bear's breeches family, Acanthaceae. It contains mangrove trees, which occur in the intertidal zones of estuarine areas and are characterized by its "pencil roots", which are ...

Verbenaceae The Verbenaceae ( ), the verbena family or vervain family, is a family of mainly tropical flowering plants. It contains trees, shrubs, and herbs notable for heads, spikes, or clusters of small flowers, many of which have an aromatic smell. The ...

and

Lamiaceae The Lamiaceae ( ) or Labiatae are a family of flowering plants commonly known as the mint, deadnettle or sage family. Many of the plants are aromatic in all parts and include widely used culinary herbs like basil, mint, rosemary, sage, savory ...

.Portuguese Genealogy Net
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Publications

*''Flórula Vascular da Mata da Bufarda'' – Abílio Fernandes & Rosette Batarda Fernandes *''A Universidade de Coimbra e o Estudo da Flora e da Vegetação dos Paízes Africanos de Língua Oficial Portuguesa'' – Abílio Fernandes (1993)

References

20th-century Portuguese botanists Portuguese taxonomists People from Guarda, Portugal 1906 births 1994 deaths {{Portugal-botanist-stub