French botanist and colonial administrator. Ambroise Palisot de Beauvois was a tireless collector in West Africa, Haiti and the United States despite the onslaught of catastrophes which befell him and his collections. Travelling to the Gulf of Guinea on what was supposed to be a four-year trip, he ended up away from France for 12 years after narrowly escaping death by fever and execution and being deported to the USA twice. Unable to return home during the French Revolution each of his three main collections was destroyed, by fire, looting and shipwreck.

Originally from Arras, Palisot studied at Harcourt College in Paris and was called to the Bar in 1772. His father and brother passed away around this time leaving him with a large estate and the title of Receiver of Domains and Forests of Northern France. Throughout this period he exercised his love of natural history, studying the cryptogamic plants both in the field and in the laboratory. In 1786 Palisot was able to realise his dream of travelling to Africa when he joined Captain Landolphe's voyage to the west coast. Leaving with a 300-strong team they were tasked with the establishment of a trading settlement in Owara. During the first six months 250 of their team died of fever, but this did not stop Palisot from exploring Guinea and Benin from late 1786 until 1787. Sending many of his specimens back to A.-L. de Jussieu in Paris he finally succumbed to fever and, no longer able to work, was sent to Haiti with the hope of recovering. Staying with his uncle, who was a colonial administrator, Palisot was able to recuperate and was soon out plant hunting once more despite the considerable threat posed by groups of rebelling slaves. Eventually the revolts in Haiti were such that Palisot was recruited to administer troops and work for the colonial government, and by 1791 they were forced to flee to the United States.

Working in Philadelphia as a commissioner for the colonial government, Palisot resumed his collecting activity and was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1792. The following year he attempted a return to Haiti but found that his house, including his personal herbarium from that country and many of his manuscripts from west Africa, had been destroyed in a fire and the revolutionaries soon had him imprisoned. Luckily he was able to escape execution with the help of a mulatta girl who was freed from slavery by his uncle. Things went from bad to worse for Palisot and the ship on which he was deported back to the USA was intercepted by the British who took all of his possessions. Arriving in the USA he found that the British had also plundered Owara and taken the entirety of his African collection. What's more, in revolutionary France The Terror was in full swing and he had been designated an "émigré" due to his aristocratic birth, meaning that his return home would surely end in death. Destitute in Philadelphia he was no longer able to procure money from France and had to teach music and French, as well as playing in a circus orchestra, in order to survive. Also finding work at Charles Wilson Peale's museum (now the Museum of Philadelphia) he created a catalogue of this collection and continued to collect plants and animals himself. Over the following years Palisot travelled from New York to Georgia and westwards to Ohio in search of specimens. He was even tasked with researching the fur trade and agricultural activities of the Southern States. Luckily he sent some of his specimens back to Paris, because when finally allowed back into France in 1798, his American collection was entirely destroyed in a shipwreck of the coast of Halifax.

Despite the loss of most of his specimens, Palisot's love of natural history led him to spend the rest of his life studying the grasses and cryptogamic plants. He produced numerous papers, most of which were published, and retained enough information from his days in West Africa to publish Flore d'Oware et Benin (1805-1820). This work of 20 fascicles, each with six plates, is now extremely rare and expensive. As a cryptogamist he published an important early treatment of the mosses and lycopods entitled Prodrome des cinquième et sixième familles de l'aethéogamie (1805) in which 71 new species and ten new genera can be found. The genera Belvisia Desv. and Palisota Rchb. ex Endl. were named in his honour and the majority of his extant collections are housed in the Conservatoire Botanique in Geneva (G), although some were returned to Philadelphia from Paris.

Sources:
E.D. Merrill, 1936, "Palisot de Beauvois as an overlooked American botanist", Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 76: 899-920
H.A. Crum, 1952, "Bibliographic notes on Palisot de Beauvois' prodrome", Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club.