Augustin Saint-Hilaire

Augustin François César Prouvençal de Saint-Hilaire (4 October 1779 – 3 September 1853) was a French botanist and traveller who was born and died in Orléans, France.A keen observer, he is credited with important discoveries in botany, notably the direction of the radicle in the embryo sac and the double point of attachment of certain ovules.In the next years he devoted himself to the study, classification, description and publication of this huge material, but he was considerably impaired by his ill health, due to diseases contracted during the tropical travels.[citation needed] The works by which he is best known are the Flora Brasiliae Meridionalis in three volumes (1825–1832), published in conjunction with Adrien-Henri de Jussieu and Jacques Cambessèdes, and illustrated by Pierre Jean François Turpin; Histoire des Plantes les plus Remarquables du Brésil et du Paraguay (1824), Plantes Usuelles des Brésiliens (1827–1828), also in conjunction with de Jussieu and Cambessèdes(1828); and Voyage Dans le District des Diamants et sur le littoral du Brésil, in two volumes (1833).His Leçons de Botanique, Comprénant Principalement la Morphologie Végetale (1840), was a comprehensive exposition of botanical morphology and of its application to systematic botany.