Par Raj Boodhoo
The Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle (MNHN) celebrates the 400th anniversary of its foundation this year. In January 1626, King Louis XIII founded the Jardin royal des plantes médicinales (Royal Garden of Medicinal Plants). To mark this milestone event, the MNHN has organized major exhibitions, visits to greenhouses with tropical plants, and also key seminars on biodiversity awareness and climate change. Four centuries of botanical experience are being showcased. One featured event focuses on culinary and medicinal plants since the 17th century. In October, La Fête de la Science is highlighting the evolution of scientific research over the years.
In 1718, under Louis XV, the garden was renamed Jardin du Roi. Henceforth, it expanded from an exclusive garden, supervised by apothecaries into a scientific institution under the direction of botanists, linked to scientific societies such as the Académie des Sciences. The Jardin collected global floral specimens through a network of agents and gardeners in the colonies. This article overviews the historical link between the botanical experience of Isle de France/Mauritius and institutions in Paris in the Age of Enlightenment.
In Isle de France, the French East India Company administrators introduced plants from Europe, India, Madagascar and the Cape, to produce food for the inhabitants, slaves and ships’ crews. Company agents, ship captains and surgeons were required to transfer plants from countries they visited to this island, and send samples of ‘curious and useful’ ones to Paris. Governor La Bourdonnais created not only a vegetable garden at Pamplemousses, but also introduced cash crops such as indigo, cotton, sugar cane and coffee. The Company sent apothecary J.B Fusée-Aublet to set up a garden of medicinal plants and a laboratory at Le Réduit to provide remedies to company ships. The latter expanded his collection and introduced plants from various parts of the world. Commissioned by Louis XV, Fusée Aublet was sent on a botanic mission to French Guiana. His work Histoire des Plantes de la Guiane françoise (1775), also contains a list of plants herborised in Mauritius, using both vernacular and scientific names. Also, Abbé Galloys was commissioned to bring Chinese plants to Isle de France, where Pierre Poivre set up the Mon Plaisir Garden. From the mid-18th century onwards, inventories, as well as seeds, living and dry plants (herbarium) from Isle de France were dispatched to the Jardin du Roi and Trianon gardens. Fusée Aublet sent a first inventory of plants from Le Réduit, which list is preserved at the Central Library of MNHN. Joseph Banks, future director of Kew Gardens, later purchased part of his herbarium. Francois Etienne Le Juge also sent an inventory of plants from his garden at Mon Goust in the Pamplemousses district. His inventory included litchi and longane fruit trees, at that time little known in Paris. Pierre-Laurent Dereine, a partner of La Bourdonnais, cultivated indigo and other exotic trees at Montagne Longue. He managed to have access to the court and presented some plants to Louis XV. (G.Lamy) Bernardin de St. Pierre, author of the pastoral novel Paul et Virginie, included a chapter on the flora in Voyage à l’Isle de France (1773). On his return to France, he befriended J.J.Rousseau, both regarded nature as a form of therapy. Bernardin de Saint Pierre joined the Jardin du Roi in 1792, on the eve of the garden’s conversion to Jardin des Plantes. J.F. Charpentier de Cossigny established a vast domain at Palma in the Plaines Wilhems, where he cultivated coffee, indigo and a new variety of sugar cane introduced from Batavia. He corresponded extensively with Louis-Guillaume Lemonnier, Chief Physician to the king and professor of botany at the Jardin du Roi, and to whom, he also sent various plants, seeds and mémoires. Cossigny was one of the most prolific writers of the French commercial empire, his mémoires and books, published in Isle de France and Europe, focused on crops like indigo, coffee and the making of « eau de vie de sucre », and cannon powder from bois noir. He was appointed member of Académie Royale des Sciences in 1774. His papers are preserved at the MNHN library. It was Cossigny who suggested the importance of setting up a monument to engrave the names of pioneering figures who enriched the flora of the island with exotic species.
Under the supervision of Pierre Poivre and his successor Nicolas Céré, various species of spice plants were introduced at the Pamplemousses Gardens. Exotic plants were validated, treated in nurseries, multiplied and distributed to local inhabitants, to Bourbon (Reunion), to the Seychelles, to French Guiana and the Carribean islands. Samples were also to Trianon gardens and the Jardin du Roi. Céré, J.F. Stadtman and Aubert du Petit-Thouars were all connected to scientists abroad. Petit-Thouars explored the flora of the Mascarenes for about ten years. His works, published in France in 1804, are foundational works on unknown species, especially orchids. As for Céré, he was awarded a gold medal by the Société de l’Agriculture in 1788 for acclimatizing nutmeg and clove plants. His works inspired Banks to start such activities at the British colony of St Vincent in the Caribbean.
When the expedition of Bougainville stopped at Port Louis, Philibert Commerson, remained at Isle de France, and herborised extensively in the Mascarenes and Madagascar. After his death, his enormous collections were shipped to the Jardin des Plantes, together with drawings executed by Jossigny. Some members of the d’Entrecasteaux expedition, sent in search of La Perouse, happened to land in Mauritius and leave behind plants collected in the Pacific islands. Several scientists, among whom were André Michaux and J. B. Bory de Saint Vincent abandoned the Baudin expedition, when the ships docked at Port Louis in 1801. Michaux had earlier explored the North American flora and introduced a number of seedlings to the Jardin des Plantes, where some 200-year-old trees (arbres historiques) are still standing. Michaux died while exploring the flora in Madagascar. Bory de Saint Vincent explored the flora of the islands, and published his work in 1804. A prolific writer, he was elected correspondent of the MNHN and of the Institut de France.
From the mid-18th century the Jardin du Roi expanded, under the superintendence of Comte de Buffon. Living and dry plants, seeds, drawings and mémoires were collected from various parts of the world. Plants were studied, named and categorized. However, the French Revolution was a turning point for botanical science. In 1793, the name Jardin du Roi was stripped of its royalist connotation and renamed Jardin des Plantes. Rare plants from aristocratic gardens were incorporated there. Other royal institutions, such as the Académie des Sciences were reinvented and nationalized. Some figures of the ancien régime such as André Thouin, Chief Gardener, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, naturaliste, and Bernardin de Saint-Pierre survived the chaotic times.
For a long time, historians have focused on the centralizing activities of botanical institutions in Paris, arguing knowledge was created there and imparted to the colonies. Recent historiography showing a shift from this center-periphery model, emphasizes on the active and independent role played by colonial administrators and local cultivators, in not only setting up gardens, but also constructing botanical knowledge. It is argued that Paris depended on the periphery for obtaining plants and also knowledge on plants from a network of colonial gardens. We have mentioned above the role of some pioneers at Isle de France who contributed in the construction of botanic science through memoirs, books, herbariums and drawings. Recently, several seminars have been held in Mauritius, Reunion Island and Europe on the botanic experience of the Age of Enlightenment. In 2023, at a seminar (Botanical Legacies from the Enlightenment) organized by the University of Neuchatel, historians focused on Fusée Aublet’s work on plants he herborised in Guiana and Mauritius. In 2003, the University of Kerala published the late 17th century monumental works of van Rheede ‘Hortus Malabaricus’ (the Garden of Malabar), translated from Latin into English, by Prof. K.S. Manilal (1938-2025), exposing the contribution of Indian sages in sharing knowledge on medicinal plants.(K. Raj. Global Matters, University of Paris)
At the Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam Garden, the names of pioneers enriching the flora of Mauritius, are engraved on the Liénard obelisk. Some alleys of the garden are also dedicated to them. The Garden is the oldest and largest green space open to locals, tourists and school children, who marvel at rare tropical species. It remains a site for time travel indeed, but it can also evolve into an active centre for botanical education on plant conservation and reflection on climate change and loss of species.
