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 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. 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 (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 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 1840, 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 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 Gi ...

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 Fre ...

, who described numerous unpublished new species.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 Marie may refer to: People Name * Marie (given name) * Marie (Japanese given name) * Marie (murder victim), girl who was killed in Florida after being pushed in front of a moving vehicle in 1973 * Marie (died 1759), an enslaved Cree person in Tro ...

,Jean et Joseph Cambresier, petits maîtres, liégeois de talent
R. Sartorius, Francois Stroobant (1819-1916) and

François De Tollenaere François () is a French masculine given name and surname, equivalent to the English name Francis. People with the given name * Francis I of France, King of France (), known as "the Father and Restorer of Letters" * Francis II of France, King o ...

. Their style later heavily influenced

Margaret Mee Margaret Ursula Mee, MBE (22 May 1909 – 30 November 1988) was a British botanical artist who specialised in plants from the Brazilian Amazon Rainforest. She was also one of the first environmentalists to draw attention to the impact of large- ...

's paintings.

References

Bibliography

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