Charles Plumier (French:[ʃaʁlply.mje]; 20 April 1646 – 20 November 1704) was aFrenchbotanist after whom the frangipani genusPlumeria is named. Plumier is considered one of the most important of the botanical explorers of his time. He made three botanizing expeditions to theWest Indies, which resulted in a massive workNova Plantarum Americanarum Genera (1703–1704) and was appointed botanist to KingLouis XIV of France.

Born inMarseille, at the age of 16, he entered the religious order of theMinims. He devoted himself to the study ofmathematics andphysics, made physical instruments, and was an excellent draughtsman, painter, andturner.

On being sent to the French monastery ofTrinità dei Monti atRome, Plumier studiedbotany under two members of the order, and especially underCistercian botanist,Paolo Boccone. After his return to France, he became a pupil ofJoseph Pitton de Tournefort, whom he accompanied on botanical expeditions.

He also explored the coasts ofProvence andLanguedoc. His work began in 1689, when, by order of the government, he accompanied collector Joseph Donat Surian to the FrenchAntilles, as Surian's illustrator and writer. They remained a year and a half.^[1] As this first journey, written up by Plumier asDescription des Plantes d'Amérique (1693), proved very successful, Plumier was appointed royal botanist. In 1693, by command ofLouis XIV of France, he made his second journey, and in 1695 his third journey to theAntilles. While in the West Indies, he was assisted by theDominican botanistJean-Baptiste Labat. The material gathered was prodigious: besides theNova Plantarum Americanarum Genera it filled the volumes of Plumier'sFilicetum Americanum (1703) and several shorter pieces for theJournal des Savants and theMemoires de Trévoux.^[2]

In 1704, with hisTraité des Fougères de l'Amérique in the press and about to start on his fourth journey, intending to visit the home of the truecinchona tree inPeru, he was taken ill withpleurisy and died atPuerto de Santa Maria nearCadiz.

At his death Plumier left 31 manuscript volumes containing notes and descriptions, and about 6,000 drawings, 4,000 of which were of plants, while the remainder reproduced American animals of nearly all classes, especially birds and fishes.^[3] The botanistHerman Boerhaave had 508 of these drawings copied at Paris; these were published later in ahommage by Burmann, Professor of Botany at Amsterdam, under the title: "Plantarum americanarum, quas olim Carolus Plumerius botanicorum princeps detexit", fasc. I-X (Amsterdam, 1755–1760), containing 262 plates.^[4] Plumier also wrote treatises for theJournal des Savants and for theMémoires de Trévoux. Through his observations in Martinique, Plumier proved that thecochineal belongs to the animal kingdom and should be classed among the insects.

All natural scientists of the 18th century spoke of him with admiration.Tournefort andLinnaeus named in his honour the genusPlumeria, which belongs to the familyApocynaceae and is indigenous in about 40 species toCentral America.

• Plumier identified and describedFuchsia, which he discovered on the island ofHispaniola in theCaribbean in 1696-7. He published his first description ofFuchsia (Fuchsia triphylla, flore coccineo) in 1703.
• Charles Plumier named the plant genus "Begonia" afterMichel Bégon, the governor of Haiti, as a tribute for recommending Plumier to King Louis XIV as an official plant collector.
• French explorer and botanistLouis Feuillée was one of his pupils.
• His first work wasDescription des plantes de l'Amérique (Paris, 1693); it contained 108 plates, half of which representedferns. This was followed byNova plantarum americanarum genera (Paris, 1703–04), with 40 plates; in this work about 100 genera, with about 700 species, were redescribed. At a later date, Linnaeus adopted in his system, almost without change, these and other newly described genera arranged by Plumier. Plumier left a work in French and Latin ready to be printed entitledTraité des fougères de l'Amérique (Paris, 1705), which contained 170 excellent plates. The publication "Filicetum Americanum" (Paris, 1703), with 222 plates, was compiled from those already mentioned. Plumier also wrote another book of an entirely different character on turning,L'Art de tourner (Lyons, 1701; Paris, 1749); this was translated into Russian byPeter the Great. The manuscript of the translation is at St. Petersburg.

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "Charles Plumier".Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.

His collection of plant specimens deposited in Paris at theNational Museum of Natural History, France was curated byAlicia Lourteig in the twentieth century.^[6]

• The gobySicydium plumieri(Bloch, 1786) is named after him.^[7]

• List of Roman Catholic scientist-clerics

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• 1646 births
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