De Jussieu Brings Lebanon Cedar to France, 1734


De Jussieu bringing the first cedar of Lebanon to be planted at the Jardin du Roi. He collected the seedling tree from Britain in 1734, as a present for the King Louis XV. Legend has it that De Jussieu carried the seedling in his hat to keep it safe. Bernard de Jussieu (August 17, 1699 - November 6, 1777) was a French naturalist. He took a medical degree at Montpellier and began practice in 1720, but finding the work uncongenial he gladly accepted a position as sub-demonstrator of plants in the Jardin des Plantes. Long before Abraham Trembley published his Histoire des polypes d'eau douce, Jussieu maintained the doctrine that these organisms were in fact animals, and not the flowers of marine plants, which was the notion at the time. In 1759 he arranged the plants in the royal garden of the Trianon in the Palace of Versailles, according to his own scheme of classification. He cared little for the credit of enunciating new discoveries, so long as the facts were made public. He was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1749. He died in 1777 at the age of 78. Engraving from "Vies des savants illustres" by Louis Figuier.


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Photo credit: © Photo Researchers / Alamy / Afripics
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