Charles Jacques Édouard Morren (2 December 1833 – 28 February 1886) was a Belgian botanist, professor of botany and director of the '' Jardin botanique de l'Université de Liège'' from 1857 to 1886. His special field of study was the Bromeliaceae on which family he was the recognized authority. He was the son of Charles François Antoine Morren. He was editor of the journal ''

La Belgique Horticole ''La Belgique Horticole'' ("Horticultural Belgium") was an illustrated horticultural review published in Liège, Belgium, from 1851 to 1885. For the first four years it was edited by Charles Morren, director of the Botanical Garden of Liège. Fr ...

'' in which he published descriptions of numerous new species. He was working on a monograph of the Bromeliaceae when death intervened at a relatively youthful 53 years. His manuscripts and commissioned

watercolor Watercolor (American English) or watercolour (British English; see spelling differences), also ''aquarelle'' (; from Italian diminutive of Latin ''aqua'' "water"), is a painting method”Watercolor may be as old as art itself, going back to ...

plates were sold to

Kew Gardens Kew Gardens is a botanic garden in southwest London that houses the "largest and most diverse botanical and mycological collections in the world". Founded in 1840, from the exotic garden at Kew Park, its living collections include some of the ...

by his widow shortly after his death and examined by

John Gilbert Baker John Gilbert Baker (13 January 1834 – 16 August 1920) was an English botanist. His son was the botanist Edmund Gilbert Baker (1864–1949). Biography Baker was born in Guisborough in North Yorkshire, the son of John and Mary (née Gilbert ...

and

Carl Christian Mez Carl Christian Mez (26 March 1866 – 8 January 1944) was a German botanist and university professor. He is denoted by the author abbreviation when citing a botanical name. Life and work Mez came from a family of industrialists in Frei ...

, who described numerous unpublished new species. Baker made extensive use of these paintings in the preparation of his ''Handbook of the Bromeliaceae'' which was published in 1889. Morren employed four artists to work on the plates - Marie Jean Guillaume Cambresier,Jean et Joseph Cambresier, petits maîtres, liégeois de talent
R. Sartorius, Francois Stroobant (1819-1916) and François De Tollenaere. Their style later heavily influenced Margaret Mee's paintings.

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Bibliography

Botanists with author abbreviations 19th-century Belgian botanists Belgian horticulturists 1833 births 1886 deaths {{Belgium-botanist-stub