Louis Antoine de Bougainville

Louis Antoine de Bougainville

A Friend of Baret Today is the anniversary of the death of the French admiral and explorer Louis Antoine de Bougainville, who died on this day in 1729. On Bougainville’s expedition, a woman named Jeanne Baret joined the crew after posing as a valet to the expedition’s naturalist: Philibert Commerçon. Commerçon had terrible health, and…

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Six Popular Plants Named for Famous People and Botanists

bougainvillea

“Leonard Fuchs, a German botanist, discovered the plant known as fuchsia, while William Forsyth, a Scotch botanist, is responsible for the name forsythia.” August 1, 1950 On this day, The Ithaca Journal, out of Ithaca, New York, published a question from a reader. The reader wanted an answer to this question: Please list a few…

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