Charles Jacques Édouard Morren (2 December 183328 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 The Bromeliaceae (the bromeliads) are a family of monocot flowering plants of about 80 genera and 3700 known species, native mainly to the tropical Americas, with several species found in the American subtropics and one in tropical west Africa, ...

on which family he was the recognized authority. He was the son of

Charles François Antoine Morren Charles François Antoine Morren (3 March 1807 in Ghent – 17 December 1858 in Liège), was a Belgian botanist and horticulturist, and Director of the ''Jardin botanique de l'Université de Liège''. Morren is credited with introducing the term " ...

. He was editor of the journal '' La Belgique Horticole'' 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 (Commonwealth English; see American and British English spelling differences#-our, -or, spelling differences), also ''aquarelle'' (; from Italian diminutive of Latin 'water'), is a painting metho ...

plates were sold to

Kew Gardens Kew Gardens is a botanical garden, botanic garden in southwest London that houses the "largest and most diverse botany, botanical and mycology, mycological collections in the world". Founded in 1759, from the exotic garden at Kew Park, its li ...

by his widow shortly after his death and examined by

John Gilbert Baker John Gilbert Baker (13 January 1834 – 16 August 1920) was an England, 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 ...

and Carl Christian Mez, who described numerous unpublished new species.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