Pierre Joseph Garidel (1 August 1658 – 6 June 1737) 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 ...

Early life

Pierre-Joseph Garidel was born on 1 August 1658 in

Manosque Manosque (; Provençal Occitan: ''Manòsca'' in classical norm or ''Manosco'' in Mistralian norm) is the largest town and commune in the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence department in southeastern France. However, it is not the ''préfecture'' (capital) ...

.Christie's: GARIDEL, Pierre Joseph (1658-1737). Histoire des plantes qui naissent aux environs d'Aix, et dans plusieurs autres endroits de la Provence. Aix: Joseph David, 1715.
/ref> His father was Pierre Garidel, a lawyer, and his mother, Louise de Barthelemy.
/ref> He studied Medicine at the

University of Aix-en-Provence Aix-Marseille University (AMU; french: Aix-Marseille Université; formally incorporated as ''Université d'Aix-Marseille'') is a public research university located in the Provence region of southern France. It was founded in 1409 when Louis II o ...

and the

University of Montpellier The University of Montpellier (french: Université de Montpellier) is a public university, public research university located in Montpellier, in south-east of France. Established in 1220, the University of Montpellier is one of the oldest univ ...

Career

He became a Professor of Botany at the Aix-en-Provence. Together with

Joseph Pitton de Tournefort Joseph Pitton de Tournefort (5 June 165628 December 1708) was a French botanist, notable as the first to make a clear definition of the concept of genus for plants. Botanist Charles Plumier was his pupil and accompanied him on his voyages. Lif ...

, he studied plants from

Provence Provence (, , , , ; oc, Provença or ''Prouvènço'' , ) is a geographical region and historical province of southeastern France, which extends from the left bank of the lower Rhône to the west to the Italian border to the east; it is bor ...

. Meanwhile, he called on the French nobility to take up botany as a hobby alongside hunting.R.L. Williams, ''Botanophilia in Eighteenth-Century France: The Spirit of the Enlightenment'', Springer Science & Business Media, 31 Oct 2001, p.

/ref> In 1735, he published, '' Histoire des plantes qui naissent aux environs d'Aix et dans plusieurs autres endroits de la Provence'', which describes 1,400 plants. In the preface, he writes about the history of botany in Provence and the medicinal uses of plants.University of Wales Online Exhibitions: From Herbals to Floras: Garidel (1715)
/ref>

Death

He died on 6 June 1737 in Aix-en-Provence.

Legacy

The garidella, a subclass of the

thalamiflorae ''Thalamiflorae'' is a historical grouping of dicotyledons, arranged in the De Candolle system and in the Bentham and Hooker system. This group was named and published well before internationally accepted rules for botanical nomenclature. In these ...

, was named in his honour.

References

1658 births 1737 deaths People from Aix-en-Provence 17th-century French botanists 18th-century French botanists {{France-botanist-stub