French naturalist who collected plants in the West Indies and Venezuela for the Paris Museum of Natural History. Auguste Plée was a French official by occupation, but his first love was natural history. Indeed, he published two illustrated works on botany with his son, the botanical artist François Plée, in 1811 and 1812 (Herborisations artificielles and La jeune botaniste, ou entretiens d'un père avec son fils sur la botanique et la physiologie végétale). In 1819 he set off for the Antilles and South America, charged by the Paris Museum of Natural History with exploring the continent's botany. Landing in Martinique, he went on to Guadeloupe, St Lucia and other Caribbean islands, then Puerto Rico and Venezuela. He befriended the Swiss botanist Heinrich Wydler and they studied the vegetation of Puerto Rico together. He was forced to return to Martinique when he fell ill in 1825 and later died at Fort Royal.