Aimé Jacques Alexandre Bonpland[1] (French:[ɛmebɔ̃plɑ̃]; 22 August 1773 – 11 May 1858) was a French explorer and botanist who traveled with Alexander von Humboldt in Latin America from 1799 to 1804. He co-authored volumes of the scientific results of their expedition.
Having befriended Alexander von Humboldt at Corvisart's house,[7] he joined him on a five-year journey to Tenerife and the Spanish colonial empire in the Americas,[10] traveling to what later became the independent states of Venezuela, Cuba, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Mexico, as well as the Orinoco and Amazon basins, with a last stop in the United States.[4][11] During this trip, he collected and classified about 6,000 plants that were mostly unknown in Europe up to that time.[4] His account of these findings was published as a series of volumes from 1808 to 1816 entitled Equatorial Plants (French: Plantes equinoxiales).[4]
Upon his return to Paris, Napoleon granted him a pension of 3000 francs per year in return for the many specimens he bestowed upon the Museum of Natural History.[7] The Empress Josephine was very fond of him and installed him as superintendent over the gardens at Malmaison,[4][7] where many seeds he had brought from the Americas were cultivated.[7] In 1813, he published his Description of the Rare Plants Cultivated at Malmaison and in Navarre (Description des plantes rares cultivées à Malmaison et à Navarre).[4] During this period, he also became acquainted with Gay-Lussac, Arago, and other eminent scientists and, after the abdication of Fontainebleau, vainly pleaded with Napoleon to retire to Venezuela.[4][7] He was present at Josephine's deathbed.[7]
In 1816, he took various European plants to Buenos Aires, where he was elected professor of natural history.[4] He soon left his post, however, to explore the interior of South America.[4] In 1821, he established a colony at Santa Ana near the Paraná for the specific object of harvesting and selling yerba mate.[12] The colony was located in territory claimed by both Paraguay and Argentina; further, José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia, dictator of Paraguay, "feared that Bonpland's success in cultivating mate would interfere with his own attempt to monopolize that business."[13] The Paraguayans therefore destroyed the colony on December 8, 1821, and Bonpland was arrested as a spy and detained at Santa Maria, Paraguay[14] until 1829.[4][15] During his captivity, he married and had several children.[16] He was given freedom of movement and acted as a physician for the local poor[4] and the military garrison.[9] At the same epoch, the Swiss naturalist Johann Rudolph Rengger also stayed in Paraguay: he was not allowed to cross the strictly guarded border, but was free to circulate pending the request of a special permit for each excursion.[17]
Bonpland was freed in 1829[7] and in 1831[4] returned to Argentina, where he settled at San Borja in Corrientes.[4] There, aged 58, he married a local woman and made a living farming and trading in yerba mate.[9][18] In 1853, he returned to Santa Ana, where he cultivated the orange trees he had introduced.[4] He received a 10 000-piastre estate from the Corrientes government in gratitude for his work in the province.[4] The small town around it is now known as "Bonpland" in his honor.[19] A different small town in Misiones province just south of Santa Ana (Misiones) is also named Bonpland.
He died at age 84, at San Borja,[7] Santa Ana,[3] or Restauración[5] on 4[1] or 11[5] May 1858, before his planned return to Paris.[4]
Bonpland's biography was written by Adolphe Brunel.[21] A fictionalized account of his travels with Humboldt occurs in Daniel Kehlmann's Die Vermessung der Welt, translated by Carol Brown Janeway as Measuring the World: A Novel.
The Bonpland Prize set up by the National Horticultural Society of France to promote the creation or restoration of pleasure gardens by amateur gardeners, was named after Aimé Bonpland.[26]
Taxonomic descriptions
The following genera and species have been named or described by Aimé Bonpland.[27]
1805: Essai sur la géographie des plantes. Written with Alexander von Humboldt.
von Humboldt, Alexander; Bonpland, Aimé (2009). Essay on the geography of plants. Translated by Sylvie Romanowski, with an Introduction by Stephen T. Jackson. University of Chicago Press. ISBN9780226360669. OCLC977369593. English translation from 2009.
1811: A collection of observations on zoology and comparative anatomy written with Alexander von Humboldt, Printing JH Stone, Paris. Digital version at the website Gallica.
1815: Nova plantarum genera and species written with Alexander von Humboldt and Karl Sigismund Kunth, Volume 1, Lutetiae Parisiorum, Paris. Digital versionArchived 2020-07-27 at the Wayback Machine at the website Botanicus.
1816: Monograph Melastomacées including all plants of this order including Rhexies, Volume 1, Paris.
1817: Nova plantarum genera and species written with Alexander von Humboldt and Karl Sigismund Kunth, Volume 2, Lutetiae Parisiorum, Paris. Digital versionArchived 2020-07-27 at the Wayback Machine at the website Botanicus.
1818: Nova plantarum genera and species written with Alexander von Humboldt and Karl Sigismund Kunth, Volume 3, Lutetiae Parisiorum, Paris. Digital version at the website Botanicus.
1820: Nova plantarum genera and species written with Alexander von Humboldt and Karl Sigismund Kunth, Volume 4, Lutetiae Parisiorum, Paris. Digital version at the website Botanicus.
1821: Nova plantarum genera and species written with Alexander von Humboldt and Karl Sigismund Kunth, Volume 5, Lutetiae Parisiorum, Paris. Digital version at the website Botanicus.
1823: Nova plantarum genera and species written with Alexander von Humboldt and Karl Sigismund Kunth, Volume 6, Lutetiae Parisiorum, Paris. Digital version at the website Botanicus.
1823: Monograph Melastomacées including all plants of this order including Rhexies, Volume 2, Paris.
1825: Nova plantarum genera and species written with Alexander von Humboldt and Karl Sigismund Kunth, Volume 7, Lutetiae Parisiorum, Paris. Digital version at the website Botanicus.
^ abStephen Bell (2010). A Life in Shadow: Aimé Bonpland in Southern South America, 1817–1858 (illustrated ed.). Stanford University Press. p. 3. ISBN9780804774277.
^Daum, Andreas W. (2024). Alexander von Humboldt: A Concise Biography. Trans. Robert Savage. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. pp. 49, 51, 59, 61–72. ISBN978-0-691-24736-6.
^Stephen Bell (2010). A Life in Shadow: Aimé Bonpland in Southern South America, 1817–1858 (illustrated ed.). Stanford University Press. p. 196. ISBN9780804774277.
^Obregón (1999), "Los soportes histórico y científico de la pieza Humboldt & Bonpland, taxidermistas de Ibsen Martínez", Latin American Theatre Review. (in Spanish)
^"Aimé Bonpland, un descubridor científico". Espores: La veu del Botànic (in European Spanish). 2012-01-26. Archived from the original on 2021-05-02. Retrieved 2021-05-01. Su nombre permanece en una calle de esta ciudad, en una de las cumbres más altas de Venezuela
^"Aimé Bonpland". Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature. USGS Astrogeology Research Program.
