Philibert Commerson(1727 — 1773)
Philibert Commerson
France
9 min read
French physician, naturalist, and explorer (1727–1773), Commerson took part in Bougainville's circumnavigation (1766–1769) as the official botanist. He described thousands of plant and animal species unknown to Europe, including the bougainvillea, which he named in honour of his expedition commander.
Frequently asked questions
Key Facts
- 1727: born in Châtillon-les-Dombes (Ain)
- 1766–1769: embarks on the Bougainville expedition as official botanist and naturalist
- 1768: discovers and describes the bougainvillea (Bougainvillea) in Rio de Janeiro
- Describes more than 5,000 species new to science in the course of his travels
- 1773: dies on Île de France (Mauritius) before returning to France
Works & Achievements
More than 6,000 herbarium specimens gathered from plants collected during the round-the-world voyage and on the Île de France. These collections formed the basis for numerous descriptions of new species published after his death, notably by Antoine Laurent de Jussieu and Jean-Baptiste Lamarck.
The first manuscript description of this ornamental Brazilian vine, named in honour of Bougainville. The name was formally published by Jussieu in 1789 in *Genera Plantarum*, but it is Commerson who deserves intellectual credit for this now world-famous name.
Notes and descriptions covering several hundred fish species collected during the voyage, many of them entirely unknown to European naturalists. These manuscripts served as a direct source for Lacépède's monumental *Histoire naturelle des poissons* (1798–1803).
A body of letters sent from on board ship and from the Île de France, reporting previously unrecorded naturalist and ethnographic observations. These letters helped fuel French naturalist encyclopaedism and circulated among scholars across Europe.
Notes written during stopovers in Polynesia in which Commerson describes Tahitian and Melanesian societies with admiration, contributing to Enlightenment philosophers' reflections on human nature and the ideal society.
Anecdotes
Commerson boarded the Boudeuse with Jeanne Barret, his housekeeper and scientific assistant, who had disguised herself as a man under the name “Jean Baré.” Since women were forbidden aboard French naval vessels, this deception allowed Jeanne to become the first woman to circumnavigate the globe — a fact officially recognized by the French Navy only many years later.
In 1768, during the stopover in Tahiti, the island's inhabitants almost immediately recognized Jeanne Barret's true identity. Bougainville notes in his journal that the Tahitians, crying “Aïno!” (a woman!), unmasked a secret that had been kept for months on the open sea, much to the embarrassment of Commerson and his crewmates.
In Brazil, during the stopover at Rio de Janeiro in 1767, Commerson discovered a climbing vine with strikingly vivid violet bracts, which he named Bougainvillea spectabilis in honor of his expedition leader. This plant, now cultivated in tropical and Mediterranean gardens the world over, still bears the name he gave it — a living botanical monument to the glory of the expedition.
Over five years of exploration, Commerson assembled a herbarium of more than 6,000 dried plants and described several thousand animal and plant species previously unknown to Europeans. Too ill to return to France with Bougainville in 1769, he settled on the Île de France (present-day Mauritius), where he continued his research until his death in 1773, never seeing his homeland again.
Commerson maintained an active correspondence with the greatest naturalists of his time, including Buffon and Linnaeus, regularly sending them crates of specimens from the far side of the world. He died before he could publish the bulk of his work, but his collections, bequeathed to the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle in Paris, served as the basis for dozens of species descriptions published by other scholars in the decades that followed.
Primary Sources
M. Commerson, the King's physician-botanist, was among their number; his zeal for the sciences and the ardor with which he fulfilled his duties had earned him widespread esteem. In the course of the voyage, he had collected a prodigious quantity of plants and animals unknown in Europe.
I find myself in a land where nature seems to have delighted in multiplying its most singular productions. Each day brings me new species which I hasten to describe and illustrate, convinced that these materials will one day prove useful to science.
The collections comprise more than 6,000 herbarium specimens and hundreds of pages of handwritten notes describing new species of plants, fish, mollusks, and insects gathered during Bougainville's voyage and the subsequent stay at the Île de France.
I have the honor of sending you a new crate of dried plants from the islands of the South Sea, together with the descriptions I have had time to write up. I ask that you make use of them for the forthcoming volumes of your great work, hoping that these materials may contribute to the advancement of Natural History.
Key Places
Commerson's birthplace, where he was born in 1727 and made his first botanical observations on the Dombes plain, a landscape rich in ponds and varied vegetation that awakened his calling as a naturalist.
The Parisian scientific institution (today the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle) where Commerson prepared his expedition and to which he shipped his collections from the far side of the world; his herbaria and manuscripts are still held there and consulted by researchers today.
A port of call for the Bougainville expedition in June–July 1767, where Commerson carried out numerous botanical collections, including the discovery of the bougainvillea in the Brazilian coastal forests.
The Polynesian island where the expedition stopped in April 1768; Commerson was struck by the richness of its fauna and flora and wrote admiringly of Tahitian society, contributing to the myth of the "noble savage" so dear to Enlightenment philosophers.
The Indian Ocean island where Commerson settled from 1769 until his death in 1773, welcomed by the administrator Pierre Poivre; he continued his explorations there and undertook missions to Réunion and Madagascar before dying on the island, never having returned to France.
