Pierre Étienne Simon Duchartre (27 October 1811,

Portiragnes Portiragnes (; oc, Portiranhas) is a commune in the Hérault department in the Occitanie region in southern France. Geography Climate Portiragnes has a mediterranean climate (Köppen climate classification ''Csa''). The average annual temperatu ...

– 5 November 1894,

Meudon Meudon () is a municipality in the southwestern suburbs of Paris, France. It is in the département of Hauts-de-Seine. It is located from the center of Paris. The city is known for many historic monuments and some extraordinary trees. One of t ...

) 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 ...

. He studied

biology Biology is the scientific study of life. It is a natural science with a broad scope but has several unifying themes that tie it together as a single, coherent field. For instance, all organisms are made up of cells that process hereditary i ...

Toulouse Toulouse ( , ; oc, Tolosa ) is the prefecture of the French department of Haute-Garonne and of the larger region of Occitania. The city is on the banks of the River Garonne, from the Mediterranean Sea, from the Atlantic Ocean and from Par ...

, where after graduation he worked as a teacher. From 1837 he taught classes in

Fumel Fumel (; oc, Fumèl) is a commune in the Lot-et-Garonne department in south-western France. Situated at the right bank of the river Lot, it is the centre of a small agglomeration (population 13,028 in 2017) which consists of 7 communes, including ...

, several years later moving to Paris, where in 1848 he was accepted by the faculty of sciences. During the following year, he was appointed a professor of botany and

plant physiology Plant physiology is a subdiscipline of botany concerned with the functioning, or physiology, of plants. Closely related fields include plant morphology (structure of plants), plant ecology (interactions with the environment), phytochemistry (bi ...

at the Institut agronomique in

Versailles The Palace of Versailles ( ; french: Château de Versailles ) is a former royal residence built by King Louis XIV located in Versailles, about west of Paris, France. The palace is owned by the French Republic and since 1995 has been managed, u ...

. In 1861 he attained the chair of botany at the

Sorbonne Sorbonne may refer to: * Sorbonne (building), historic building in Paris, which housed the University of Paris and is now shared among multiple universities. *the University of Paris (c. 1150 – 1970) *one of its components or linked institution, ...

. In 1854 he was co-founder of the

Société Botanique de France The Société botanique de France (SBF) is a French learned society founded on 23 April 1854. At its inaugural meeting it stated its purpose as "to contribute to the progress of botany and related sciences and to facilitate, by all means at its di ...

, an institution in which he served as president on several separate occasions. In 1850 he experimented with

sulfur Sulfur (or sulphur in British English) is a chemical element with the symbol S and atomic number 16. It is abundant, multivalent and nonmetallic. Under normal conditions, sulfur atoms form cyclic octatomic molecules with a chemical formula ...

as a remedy against

powdery mildew Powdery mildew is a fungal disease that affects a wide range of plants. Powdery mildew diseases are caused by many different species of ascomycete fungi in the order Erysiphales. Powdery mildew is one of the easier plant diseases to identify, as ...

, a fungus that had a serious negative impact on European grapes during the mid-19th century. The genus ''Duchartrea'' (family

Gesneriaceae Gesneriaceae, the gesneriad family, is a family of flowering plants consisting of about 152 genera and ca. 3,540 species in the tropics and subtropics of the Old World (almost all Didymocarpoideae) and the New World (most Gesnerioideae), with ...

) was named in his honor by botanist

Joseph Decaisne Joseph Decaisne (7 March 1807 – 8 January 1882) was a French botanist and agronomist. He became an ''aide-naturaliste'' to Adrien-Henri de Jussieu (1797-1853), who served as the chair of rural botany. It was during this time that he began to stu ...

. He is the binomial author of many species from the botanical family

Aristolochiaceae The Aristolochiaceae () are a family, the birthwort family, of flowering plants with seven genera and about 400 known species belonging to the order Piperales. The type genus is ''Aristolochia'' L. Description They are mostly perennial, herb ...

Principal works

* ''Observations anatomiques et organogéniques sur la clandestine d'Europe (Lathraea clandestina, L.)'', 1847 - Anatomic and organogenic observations of Lathraea clandestina. * ''Famille des Aristolochiées'', 1854 -

. * ''Éléments de botanique : comprenant l'anatomie, l'organographie, la physiologie des plantes, les familles naturelles et la géographie botanique'', 1867 - Elements of botany, etc. * ''Rapport sur les progrés de la botanique physiologique'', 1868 - Report involving progress in plant physiology. * ''Observations sur les bulbes des lis'', 1873 - Observations involving

lily ''Lilium'' () is a genus of Herbaceous plant, herbaceous flowering plants growing from bulbs, all with large prominent flowers. They are the true lilies. Lilies are a group of flowering plants which are important in culture and literature in mu ...

bulbs.Open Library
Famille des Aristolochiées

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Duchartre, Pierre Etienne Simon 1811 births 1894 deaths People from Hérault 19th-century French botanists Plant physiologists