Jean Louis Marie Poiret

This article is about the botanist Jean Poiret. For the scriptwriter and actor, see Jean Poiret.

Jean Louis Marie Poiret ( 11 June 1755 in Saint-Quentin – 7 April 1834 in Paris) was a French clergyman, botanist and explorer.

From 1785 to 1786 he was sent by Louis XVI to Algeria to study the flora. After the French Revolution he became a professor of natural history at the Écoles Centrale of Aisne.

The genus Poiretia of the Fabaceae was named after him in 1807 by Étienne Pierre Ventenat.

Selected publications

• Leçons de flore: Cours complet de botanique 1819–1820 (illus. by P. J. F. Turpin).
• Voyage en Barbarie, …, pendant les années 1785 et 1786 1789.
• Histoire philosophique, littéraire, économique des plantes d'Europe 1825–1829.
• with Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck Encyclopédie méthodique: Botanique 1789–1817.
• with Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck Tableau encyclopédique et méthodique des trois règnes de la nature: Botanique 1819–1823.

Tribute

"Poiretia, la revue naturaliste du Maghreb" is a free online naturalistic journal created in 2008. It talks (in French) about flora and fauna inventory, description and mapping in north-western Africa (Maghreb). Its name is signed to Jean Louis Marie Poiret, as a tribute to its famous « Voyage en Barbarie » edited in 1789.

References

• Zander, Robert et al. (eds.) (1984) Handwörterbuch der Pflanzennamen (13th ed.) Ulmer Verlag, Stuttgart, ISBN 3-8001-5042-5.