French botanist born in Poitou, who moved to Martinique in 1786. After some years collecting plants on Martinique, Tussac became curator of a botanic garden in Haiti. In 1802 he left Haiti and visited Jamaica before returning to France, where he later took up the directorship of the botanic garden at Angers (1816-1826). He published Flore des Antilles between 1808 and 1827. Tussac made 2,000 drawings while in Martinique which were burnt in 1802 during the Haitian war of independence (his herbarium and manuscripts were saved, though the whereabouts of the latter is unknown). The tree fern Cyathea tussaccii (syn. Alsophila tussacii (Desv.) D.S. Conant) collected by Tussac was named after him by his son-in-law, Auguste Desvaux, also his successor at Angers.

Sources:
J.H. Barnhart, 1965, Biographical Notes Upon Botanists, 3: 410
R.A. Howard, 1975, ✢Modern Problems of the Years 1492-1800 in the Lesser Antilles✢, Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden, 62(2): 372
I. Urban, 1902, Symbolae Antillanae, 3: 138-139.