André Michaux

André Michaux (born March 7, 1746, Satory, Fr.—died Nov. 13, 1802, Tamatave, Madagascar) was a French botanist who spent 12 years studying the plants of North America.

From 1779 to 1781 Michaux travelled in England, Spain, and in the Auvergne region of south central France, studying the plants of these areas. In 1782 the French government sent him to Persia to collect plants and grains, which he brought back to France in 1785. He was then sent to North America to collect plants for the depleted forest of Rambouillet, southwest of Paris. He stocked the two nurseries with plants he collected from what are now the Southeastern and Midwestern states. Shipwrecked on his return trip to Paris in 1797, he lost most of the plants he had collected. In 1800 he went to Madagascar, where he contracted a fever from which he died.