Antonio José Cavanilles (16 January 1745 – 5 May 1804) was a leading Spanish taxonomic

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 ...

of the 18th century. He named many plants, particularly from

Oceania Oceania (, , ) is a geographical region that includes Australasia, Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. Spanning the Eastern and Western hemispheres, Oceania is estimated to have a land area of and a population of around 44.5 million ...

. He named at least 100 genera, about 54 of which were still used in 2004, including ''

Dahlia Dahlia (, ) is a genus of bushy, tuberous, herbaceous perennial plants native to Mexico and Central America. A member of the Asteraceae (former name: Compositae) family of dicotyledonous plants, its garden relatives thus include the sunflower, ...

'', '' Calycera'', ''

Cobaea ''Cobaea'' is a genus of flowering plants including about 20 species of rapid growing, ornamental climbers whose native range extends from Mexico to Peru. The botanical name honors Father Bernabé Cobo, Spanish Jesuit of the seventeenth century, ...

'', '' Galphimia'', and ''

Oleandra Oleandra is a genus of ferns. In the Pteridophyte Phylogeny Group classification of 2016 (PPG I), it is the only genus in the family Oleandraceae, which is placed in suborder Polypodiineae, order Polypodiales. Alternatively, the family may be ...

''.

Biography

Cavanilles was born in

Valencia Valencia ( va, València) is the capital of the autonomous community of Valencia and the third-most populated municipality in Spain, with 791,413 inhabitants. It is also the capital of the province of the same name. The wider urban area al ...

. He lived in

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. Si ...

from 1777 to 1781, where he followed careers as a clergyman and a botanist, thanks to

André Thouin André Thouin (10 February 1747 – 24 October 1824) was a French botanist. Thouin studied botany under Bernard de Jussieu, and in 1793 attained the chair of horticulture at the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle in Paris. He was a good f ...

and

Antoine Laurent de Jussieu Antoine Laurent de Jussieu (; 12 April 1748 – 17 September 1836) was a French botanist, notable as the first to publish a natural classification of flowering plants; much of his system remains in use today. His classification was based on an ...

. He was one of the first Spanish scientists to use the classification method invented by

Carl Linnaeus Carl Linnaeus (; 23 May 1707 – 10 January 1778), also known after his ennoblement in 1761 as Carl von Linné Blunt (2004), p. 171. (), was a Swedish botanist, zoologist, taxonomist, and physician who formalised binomial nomenclature, ...

. From Paris he moved to

Madrid Madrid ( , ) is the capital and most populous city of Spain. The city has almost 3.4 million inhabitants and a metropolitan area population of approximately 6.7 million. It is the second-largest city in the European Union (EU), and ...

, where he was director of the Royal Botanical Garden and Professor of botany from 1801 to 1804. In 1804, Cavanilles was elected a member of the

American Philosophical Society The American Philosophical Society (APS), founded in 1743 in Philadelphia, is a scholarly organization that promotes knowledge in the sciences and humanities through research, professional meetings, publications, library resources, and communit ...

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Since ...

. He died in Madrid in 1804.

Selected publications

* ''Icones et descriptiones plantarum, quae aut sponte in Hispania crescunt, aut in hortis hospitantur...'', Madrid, 1791-180

References

External links

Biography
by the

Australian National Botanic Gardens The Australian National Botanic Gardens (ANBG) is a heritage-listed botanical garden located in , Canberra, in the Australian Capital Territory, Australia. Established in 1949, the Gardens is administered by the Australian Government's Departm ...

Malpighiaceae/Cavanilles

''Monadelphiæ classis dissertationes decem'' on the Internet Archive

Scans of 160 plates from ''Monadelphiæ classis dissertationes decem''
Antonio José Cavanilles. Polymath Virtual Library, Fundación Ignacio Larramendi
1745 births 1804 deaths People from Valencia 18th-century Spanish botanists Pteridologists Catholic clergy scientists Botanical illustrators {{Spain-botanist-stub

Biography

Selected publications

See also

References

Further reading

External links