Charles Joseph Sacleux (1856–1943) was a French Catholic missionary and linguist. He is known also as a botanist, having collected a herbarium of over 2000 plants in East Africa and

Zanzibar Zanzibar (; ; ) is an insular semi-autonomous province which united with Tanganyika in 1964 to form the United Republic of Tanzania. It is an archipelago in the Indian Ocean, off the coast of the mainland, and consists of many small islands ...

Life

He was born on 5 July 1856 at Enquin in northern France, the son of Auguste Sacleux who died when he was aged 5, and his wife Marie Firmine Bayart. He joined the

Holy Ghost Fathers , image = Holy Ghost Fathers seal.png , size = 175px , caption = The seal of the Congregation depicting the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and the Holy Spirit proceeding from the Trinity. , abbreviation ...

in 1875, after two years of seminary, and became a priest in 1878. Sacleux went to Zanzibar in 1879, and was posted to

Bagamoyo Bagamoyo, is a historic coastal town founded at the end of the 18th century, though it is an extension of a much older (8th century) Swahili settlement, Kaole. It was chosen as the capital of German East Africa by the German colonial administra ...

. In 1878 he returned to France, and took a position at Chevilly. He died at Grasse on 16 May 1943. In 1890, botanist

Baill. Henri Ernest Baillon was a French botanist and physician. He was born in Calais on 30 November 1827 and died in Paris on 19 July 1895. Baillon spent his professional life as a professor of natural history, and he published numerous works on ...

published ''

Sacleuxia ''Sacleuxia'' is a genus of flowering plants in the family Apocynaceae. It is also in the Periplocoideae subfamily. It is native to Kenya and Tanzania in eastern Tropical Africa. The genus name of ''Sacleuxia'' is in honour of Charles Sacleux ( ...

'', a

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of extant taxon, living and fossil organisms as well as Virus classification#ICTV classification, viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus com ...

flowering plant Flowering plants are plants that bear flowers and fruits, and form the clade Angiospermae (), commonly called angiosperms. The term "angiosperm" is derived from the Greek words ('container, vessel') and ('seed'), and refers to those plants th ...

s from Kenya and Tanzania, in the

family Family (from la, familia) is a Social group, group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or Affinity (law), affinity (by marriage or other relationship). The purpose of the family is to maintain the well-being of its ...

Apocynaceae Apocynaceae (from ''Apocynum'', Greek for "dog-away") is a family of flowering plants that includes trees, shrubs, herbs, stem succulents, and vines, commonly known as the dogbane family, because some taxa were used as dog poison Members of the ...

and named in Charles Sacleux's honor.

Works

Sacleux wrote: *''Essai de phonétique avec son application à l'étude des idiomes (1905) *''Grammaire des dialectes swahilis'' (1909) *''Dictionnaire swahili-français'' (1939).Online version (open access)
His dictionary of the Comorian language was published in 1979 in two volumes by Mohamed Ahmed Chamanga and Noël Jacques Gueunier.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sacleux, Charles 1856 births 1943 deaths 19th-century French Roman Catholic priests Holy Ghost Fathers French Roman Catholic missionaries Linguists from France French lexicographers 20th-century French botanists Missionary botanists Missionary linguists 19th-century French botanists