Anthelme Thozet

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Anthelme Thozet (1826–31 May 1878) was a French-Australian botanist and ethnographer.

Born in Lyon, France in 1826, Thozet emigrated to New South Wales prior to 1856 when he started working as a gardener at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney, New South Wales from 1856 before moving to Rockhampton, Queensland in 1858.

He researched native Australian plants used by indigenous people of Northern Queensland, Australia including the Darumbal clans around Rockhampton where he worked as a botantist in the 1860s. In 1866 he published "Notes on Some of the Roots, Tubers, Bulbs and Fruits Used as Vegetable Food by the Aboriginals of Northern Queensland, Australia" W H Buzacott, Rockhampton. This pamphlet includes a description of midamo, a mixture of mangrove roots and berries made by baking the root of the common mangrove (’Avicennia Tomentosa’) called Egaie by the tribes of Cleveland Bay, and Tagon–Tagon by those of Rockhampton.

Thozet was the first director of the Rockhampton Botanic Gardens founded in 1861 and was known to supply plant and seed specimens to other botanists and Botanical Gardens, including Ferdinand von Mueller of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Melbourne. Following his resignation from the Rockhampton Botanic Gardens, Thozet established his own plant nursery in North Rockhampton in the road which today bears his name.

A building at the Primary Industries Research Centre (Plant Sciences Group) at Rockhampton is named in his honour. A creek and a road in Rockhampton also bear his name.