Jacques-Julien Houtou de Labillardière (28 October 1755 – 8 January 1834) was a French biologist noted for his descriptions of the flora ofAustralia. Labillardière was a member of a voyage in search of theLa Pérouse expedition. He published a popular account of his journey and produced the firstFlora on the region.
Jacques Labillardière was born inAlençon,Normandy, France, on 28 October 1755. The ninth of 14 children of a lace merchant, he was born into a devoutlyRoman Catholic family of modest means.[1]
The surnameLabillardière originated with Labillardière's grandfather, Jacques Houtou, who, in an affectation of nobility, appended the name of the family's estate,La Billardière, after his surname. Labillardière was thus baptised under the surnameHoutou de Labillardière, but he later dropped thepatronymic, retaining onlyLabillardière in both his publications and his signature.[1]
As a child, he attended theCollège royal d'Alençon, where he excelled in his studies.[2] Around 1772, he matriculated to theUniversity of Montpellier, studying medicine underAntoine Gouan.[3] He did not graduate from Montpellier, instead transferring to theReims University around 1774. After graduating in 1779,[4] he moved to Paris, where he spent much of his time at theJardin du Roi. Having decided to pursue his interest in natural history, rather than a medical career, he took up an opportunity to collect specimens forLouis-Guillaume Le Monnier.[5]
Labillardière undertook his first voyage as a naturalist in 1783. Sent toBritain by Le Monnier to study the exotic plants in cultivation there, he ended up staying almost two years, during which time he established enduring friendships withSir Joseph Banks,James Edward Smith,Aylmer Bourke Lambert andGeorge Williams.[6] On returning from Britain, Labillardière immediately set out on a voyage through theFrench Alps.[7]
Labillardière's early voyages seem to have fired a passion for exploring foreign lands because, on his return to Paris, he immediately began making plans for a voyage to theNear East, in order to study the plants described by physicians of theIslamic Golden Age. He again secured Le Monnier's sponsorship, and Le Monnier in turn secured the support ofFrance's foreign ministerCharles Gravier, comte de Vergennes, making Labillardière's voyage virtually an official mission. Labillardière left Paris in November 1786, and departed France viaMarseille in February 1787. He travelled first toCyprus, then on toLatakia,Syria. From there he moved south along the coast as far asAcre, before turning inland toNazareth, via theMount Carmel Range. From Nazareth, he headed north toDamascus, visitingMount Hermon en route. He then crossed theMount Lebanon Range, arriving inTripoli in late June. After a detour toBsharri to see theCedars of Lebanon, he returned north along the coast, departing from Latakia in November.[8]
The following year, Labillardière made another voyage to the easternMediterranean. Little is known of that voyage, except that he made landfall atCrete,Corsica,Sardinia andLampedusa.[9]
The result of the two voyages was a collection of around 1000 specimens. As sponsor of the expedition, they were the property of Le Monnier, but Labillardière retained a great many duplicate specimens. The voyage also resulted in Labillardière's botanical account of the region, later published asIcones plantarum Syriae rariorum. Only 55 taxa were published in it but, according to Duyker, "this was sufficient to secure for him a place among the founders of modern botany in the Near and Middle East".[10]
In 1791, Labillardière was appointed as a naturalist toBruni d'Entrecasteaux's expedition toOceania, in search of the lost ships ofJean-François de Galaup, comte de La Pérouse. D'Entrecasteaux failed to find any trace of the missing expedition, but his ships visited south-west Australia,Tasmania, theNorth Island of New Zealand, and theEast Indies, where Labillardière,Claude Riche andÉtienne Pierre Ventenat, assisted by gardenerFélix Delahaye, collected zoological, botanical and geological specimens, and described the customs and languages of the localIndigenous Australians.
While the expedition was exploring Oceania, theFrench Revolutionary Wars had broken out in Europe and, when the ships reachedJava, Labillardière's scientific collections were seized by the British as spoils of war. Labillardière despaired at the loss of three years' painstaking work, but he had an ally in Joseph Banks, who campaigned for the return of the collections. In 1796, Banks's lobbying succeeded, and he was able to write to William Price at theBritish Museum:
... his Majesty's Ministers have thought it necessary for the honour of the British nation and for the advancement of Science that the right of the Captors to the Collection should be on this occasion wav'd and that the whole should be returned to M. de Billardiere, in order that he may be able to publish his Observations on Natural History in a complete manner ... By this her Majesty will lose an acquisition to her herbarium, which I very much wish'd to see deposited there, but the national character of Great Britain will certainly gain much credit for holding a conduct towards Science and Scientific men liberal in the highest degree.
Labillardière returned to France with his collections in 1796. In 1799, he published a popular account of his voyage,Relation du Voyage à la Recherche de la Pérouse, and was elected to theAcadémie des sciences.[11] Between 1804 and 1807, he publishedNovae Hollandiae Plantarum Specimen,the first general description of the flora of Australia.[citation needed] In 1816, he was elected a foreign member of theRoyal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
Labillardière had an abrasive, critical personality. Even his eulogist described him as "sharp and austere", and a man who tended to "hide everything that was good in his soul behind a caustic and bitter intellect".[12] He was also extremely stubborn. Denis andMaisie Carr describe him as having "the stubborn, almost pigheaded, independent mentality of the peasants near Alençon".[13] On the other hand, he was highly regarded for his sincerity and generosity.Augustin Saint-Hilaire, for example, wrote that Labillardière "could perceive someone's slightest defect; yet he would have been ready to open his purse for the same man whose ridiculousness had not escaped him, and would have done all in his power to help him".[14]
It has been said that Labillardière was scrupulously honest, especially with money,[15] yet he has also been criticised for failing to acknowledge the work of others, such as his unattributed use of specimens collected byL'Héritier.[citation needed]
Nothing is known of his physique, but his travels as a naturalist reveal him to be a man of good physical fitness, with a strong constitution and immense stamina. Intellectually, he is shown to be not just an outstanding botanist and naturalist with excellent observational skills, but also to be possessed of considerable linguistic abilities,[16] including an impeccable grasp of Latin.[2]
Politically he was a staunch republican.[citation needed]
Labillardière is commemorated in over a hundred published plant names, the most prestigious of which is the Australian endemic genusBillardiera, named byJames Edward Smith in 1793, in Labillardière's honour. In 1978, the Irish botanistErnest Charles Nelson publishedAdenanthos labillardierei with the specific epithet: "in recognition of Labillardière's contribution to the knowledge of this genus, and Australian botany".[17][18] A small number of animal species have been named in his honour as well, namely the Tasmanian Pademelon (Thylogale billardierii ) and the red-legged skink (Ctenotus labillardieri).[19] His name is further honoured inLabillardiere Peninsula andPoint Labillardiere onBruny Island, and byCape Labillardiere onFergusson Island,Papua New Guinea.[20]
His herbarium is now part of the Museo di Botanica at theMuseo di Storia Naturale di Firenze,University of Florence. About fifty of the plant genera established by Labillardière survive as current genera today.[20]
Amongst the notable plants detailed in the author's two works on Australia are the first descriptions ofCephalotus follicularis andEucalyptus cornuta.
The standardauthor abbreviationLabill. is used to indicate this person as the author whenciting abotanical name.[21]
Only two portraits of Labillardière survive: an 1821lithograph of a sketch byJulien-Léopold Boilly, and a lithograph byLanglumè, based on a portrait byAlexis Nicolas Noël.[22]
The first biography of Labillardière was written byJean Pierre Flourens, whose gravesideeulogy of Labillardière was published in theAnnales du Museum d'histoire in 1837. That first biography was very highly regarded, and seems to have formed the basis of most of the entries in French biographical dictionaries published over the next century, as well as the anonymous biography in Volume 2 of theAustralian Dictionary of Biography.[23]
New insights into Labillardière's life and work did not begin to appear until the 1953 publication, byAuguste Chevalier, of new information on Labillardière's early life, together with a number of his letters. More letters were published inGavin de Beer's 1960The sciences were never at war. Further biographical material was published byFrans Stafleu in 1967, and by Denis and Maisie Carr in 1976 and 1981.[23] The first book-length treatment of Labillardière's life appeared in 2003, with the publication ofEdward Duyker's award-winningCitizen Labillardière: A naturalist's life in revolution and exploration (1755–1834).
A major thread in thehistoriography of Labillardière is questions surrounding the reliability of his work. There are anomalies and contradictions in both Labillardière's account of his voyage and in his botanical data. The former appear to be at least partly attributable to mistakes made in converting the measurements and dates in his journal into themetric system and theRepublican Calendar respectively. In the latter case, the anomalies mostly concern the collection locations of his specimens, about which he was apparently quite careless.[24]Ernest Charles Nelson in particular did much to shed doubt upon Labillardière's reliability,[25] and over time a tradition arose amongst botanists that Labillardière's data was not to be trusted.
His reputation has since been restored somewhat by the Carrs who, in 1976, published a detailed validation of his account of his visit toObservatory Island, whereEucalyptus cornuta (Yate) was first collected.[24] Labillardière's type location forEucalyptus cordata remained unverified for nearly 200 years until, in August 1987, Bradley Potts, from the Department of Botany at the University of Tasmania, and Gintaras Kantvilas, from the Tasmanian Herbarium, rediscovered a stand of 200 trees on steep and densely forested Penguin Island.[26]Edward Duyker suggested that, given the period the specimens were in foreign hands, "the errors made in the published habitat statements for about a dozen species may have been a result of a shuffling of herbarium sheets or notes without Labillardière’s knowledge".[27]
One of the greatest challenges for biographers of Labillardière has been the gaining of insight into his character and personality. That is largely due to the paucity of documents and testimonies: fewer than sixty of his letters survive, and many of them are purely related to business matters. Since he clearly had an austere personality, Duyker speculates that "the lack of surviving personal detail may in itself be a reflection of a strongly defensive character".[28]
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Academics | |
| Artists | |
| People | |
| Other | |
