Jean Baptiste Christophore Fusée Aublet[1] (November 4, 1720 – May 6, 1778) was a French pharmacist, botanist and one of the earliest botanical explorers in South America.[2] He was one of the first botanists to study ethnobotany in the Neotropics.[3]
Born in Salon-de-Provence, Aublet left home early and traveled to Grenada, then a French colony, where he became an apothecary's assistant and learned about medicinal plants.[2] A year later he returned to France and continued his studies in natural history, chemistry, and pharmacology. One of his mentors was Bernard de Jussieu, a French naturalist who would later help him with plant identification.[3]
When Aublet returned to France in 1762, he was appointed to a position as the King's apothecary and botanist in French Guiana. He arrived at the colonial capital, Isle de Cayenne, in August 1762 and spent the next two years collecting plants and assembling a vast herbarium. Aublet also worked with the local people to record the traditional uses of the native plants, and often used their names for the plants as the basis for the scientific names he bestowed upon taxa.[4] His outspoken opposition to slavery was unusual for someone in his position and earned him the resentment of the local colonists who complained about his "corrupt" nature. When poor health forced his return to France in 1764, he felt obliged to obtain a letter from the Procurator General, testifying to his good and honorable conduct.[2]
After a brief stay in Haiti, Aublet continued on to Paris, arriving in 1765. With the help of Jussieu, his former mentor, he wrote descriptions of the plants he collected and prepared some 400 illustrations. In 1775 he published Histoire des plantes de la Guiane Françoise describing 576 genera and 1,241 species of neotropical plants, including more than 400 species that were new to science. At a time when only 20,000 plants had been described, this represented a significant addition to botanical knowledge.[2] Aublet also included essays on economically important plants and wrote about the people of the colony; he is considered by some to be the "founding father" of ethnobotany in the Neotropics.[3]
^IPNI gives this form of his name; however, his surnames are sometimes hyphenated, as Fusée-Aublet, his first names may also be hyphenated, and "Christophore" is sometimes given as "Christian".
