Martín Sessé y Lacasta

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Martín Sessé y Lacasta (1751 in Baraguás, Aragon, Spain—October 4, 1808, Madrid) was a Spanish botanist who relocated to Mexico (New Spain) during the eighteenth century to study and classify the flora of the territory.

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[edit] Background

Sessé studied medicine in Saragosa, then moved to Madrid in 1775. In 1779 he became a military doctor, in which capacity he visited Cuba, and later New Spain. In 1785 he was named a commissioner of the Royal Botanical Garden in New Spain. At the same time a botanical garden and a course of study on the flora of Mexico at the University of Mexico (now the UNAM) were authorized. Sessé stopped practicing medicine in order to devote all his energies to botany.

[edit] The botanical expedition

In 1786 Charles III of Spain, King of Spain, authorized a major botanical expedition (the Royal Botanical Expedition to New Spain) proposed by Sessé. Most of the flora and fauna of Mexico were unknown to European science, and those species of flora known had not been classified or given scientific names. Sessé became the head of the expedition and of the botanical garden.

His preparation for the expedition began in 1787. It was extensive, and took some time. He visited Santo Domingo, Puerto Rico and Cuba, where similar (though smaller) studies had already been made, to collaborate and learn. In Cuba he collaborated in the search for a treatment of a parasitic illness that had been spreading rapidly.

Back in New Spain, he was joined by a group of Spanish botanists selected by Casimiro Gómez Ortega, director of the Royal Botanical Garden of Madrid. These included Vicente Cervantes, the first professor of botany in New Spain, who continued to live in the country until his death in 1829; José Longinos Martínez, who organized the Gabinete de Historia Natural, the precursor of the Museum of Natural History; Juan Diego del Castillo, pharmacist and botanist; and José Maldonado. Also among the botanists was José Mariano Mociño. Mociño was a native of New Spain. Juan Cerda was the official artist of the expedition, and the Mexican Atanasio Echeverría was also one of the artists. The genus Echeveria was named for him.

Various companies of scientists were sent to such widely separated destinations as the Pacific coast of Canada, the Greater Antilles, Yucatán, Nicaragua, and San Francisco. Sessé and Mociño worked mostly in the central part of the colony. In 1793 Castillo died in Mexico, after he had written Plantas descritas en el viaje de Acapulco. The genus Castilla was named for him by Vicente Cervantes. Although the works of these botanists ended in 1803, it was not until the 1880s that their work was published.

[edit] Afterwards

After the conclusion of the expedition Sessé returned to Spain with the scientific collections for work on The Flora Mexicana, but he died in Madrid in 1808 before publishing it. The scientific collections are guarded by the Royal Botanical Garden of Madrid (about 7100 herbarium sheets with 200 genus and 3.500 new species of plants).

In 1981 there appeared in Barcelona approximately 2.000 original drawings of the Expedition, which had disappeared with Mociño's death. The drawings, in the family Torner's hands, were sold to 2.000 pesetas each one, to a North American institution, the Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation, and take out of Spain, without the Spanish authorities noted his scientific and historical value, and, on the part of the American institution, there was not notification of his special importance.

[edit] Other expeditions

The four expeditions authorized by King Charles III to the Spanish colonies were those of Hipólito Ruiz López and José Antonio Pavón to Peru and Chile (1777-88); José Celestino Mutis to New Granada (1783-1808); Juan de Cuéllar to the Philippines (1786-97); and Sessé y Lacasta to New Spain (1787-1803). See also Jean-Louis Berlandier.

[edit] Publications

  • Sessé, M. y J.M. Mociño, "Flora Mexicana", in La Naturaleza (2nd series, 1891; 2nd ed., 1894).
  • Plantae Novae Hispaniae (1889)

[edit] References

  • "Botánica," Enciclopedia de México, v. 2. Mexico City: 1987.

[edit] External links