Charles Pobéguin was a French colonial administrator and naturalist in Central and West Africa.

Born in Valence, Drôme, Pobéguin followed his father in joining the army and served with an infantry regiment in Algeria in the 1870s.Leaving the army in 1878 with the rank of sergeant, he then occupied various positions before applying for a post in the colonial service in Congo. Pobéguin remained in the colony from 1886-1891, with special responsibility for making surveys. He was then transferred to Ivory Coast in, where the governor tasked him with producing a map of the west coast of the country.

Pobéguin went on to work in Grande Comore from 1897-1899, and from 1899-1911 served as administrator in Guinea. During these years, and those spent in Ivory Coast, Pobéguin made extensive collections of plants, which he sent to the Paris Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle. Sets were subsequently distributed to other herbaria.

Pobéguin returned to his family home in France, in La Varenne-Saint-Hilaire, in 1911. He spent one more period in Africa, working in French Equatorial Africa (Congo, Gabon, Chad and Cameroon) from 1920-1923, where he made further collections. He later settled in Paris, where he died on 25 June 1951.

Pobéguin authored a number of papers on the natural history of Ivory Coast and Guinea, some of which were published in the Bulletin de la Société de Géographie. He also took many photographs during his time in Africa, and made significant collections for the Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle. Pobéguin's bryophyte collections were especially of note, with E.G. Paris identifying more than 100 of his 250 moss collections as new species.

Sources:
F.N. Hepper and F. Neate, 1971, Plant Collectors in West Africa: 65
B. Javault, 1980, Hommage à Charles-Henri Pobéguin (1856-1951)
G. Sayre, 1975, "Cryptogamae Exsiccatae: an annotated bibliography of exsiccatae of algae, lichens, hepaticae, and musci. V. Unpublished Exsiccatae: I. Collectors", Memoirs of the New York Botanical Garden, 19(3): 381.