Paul Constant Billot (12 March 1796 – 19 April 1863) was a French

botanist 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 wo ...

born in

Rambervillers Rambervillers () is a commune in the Vosges department in Grand Est in northeastern France. Inhabitants are called ''Rambuvetais''. Geography The town is built on the banks of the Mortagne, some to the west of Saint-Dié and to the north-ea ...

He studied at the

University of Strasbourg The University of Strasbourg (french: Université de Strasbourg, Unistra) is a public research university located in Strasbourg, Alsace, France, with over 52,000 students and 3,300 researchers. The French university traces its history to the ea ...

, subsequently leaving school due to illness. From 1830 he worked as a civil servant (conductor of ''ponts et chaussées''), earning his bachelor's degree a few years later. From 1834 to 1861 he taught classes in

physics Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which r ...

and natural history in

Haguenau Haguenau (; Alsatian: or ; and historically in English: ''Hagenaw'') is a commune in the Bas-Rhin department of France, of which it is a sub-prefecture. It is second in size in the Bas-Rhin only to Strasbourg, some to the south. To the ...

. With botanist

Friedrich Wilhelm Schultz Friedrich Wilhelm Schultz (3 January 1804 – 30 December 1876) was a German pharmacist and botanist who was a native of Zweibrücken. He initially learned the pharmacy profession at his father's store in Zweibrücken. In 1827 be began studie ...

(1804–1876), he was co-author of ''Archives de la flore de France et d'Allemagne''. Billot's ''Annotations a la flore de France et d'allemagne'' (1855) was issued with ''Flora galliae et germaniae exsiccata'', an

exsiccata Exsiccata (Latin, ''gen.'' -ae, ''plur.'' -ae) is a work with "published, uniform, numbered set of preserved specimens distributed with printed labels". Typically, exsiccatae refer to numbered collections of dried herbarium specimens respectivel ...

series which after his death in 1863 was continued by other scientists under the title of "Billotia". Today his

herbarium A herbarium (plural: herbaria) is a collection of preserved plant specimens and associated data used for scientific study. The specimens may be whole plants or plant parts; these will usually be in dried form mounted on a sheet of paper (called ...

is kept at the ''

Muséum d'histoire naturelle The French National Museum of Natural History, known in French as the ' (abbreviation MNHN), is the national natural history museum of France and a ' of higher education part of Sorbonne Universities. The main museum, with four galleries, is loc ...

'' in

Nantes Nantes (, , ; Gallo: or ; ) is a city in Loire-Atlantique on the Loire, from the Atlantic coast. The city is the sixth largest in France, with a population of 314,138 in Nantes proper and a metropolitan area of nearly 1 million inhabita ...

.GBIF France
Consultation de la collection: herbier Billot, collection Dufour E.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Billot, Paul Constant 1796 births 1863 deaths People from Vosges (department) 19th-century French botanists