French botanist and traveller. Jules Rémy (he was known by his middle name) collected plants in the Andes, Hawaii and various parts of Asia. After three years as a teacher in Paris, Rémy left Europe in 1851 to begin a decade of travels in America and the Pacific. Proceeding by way of the Canaries to Brazil, he thereafter visited Chile, Peru and Bolivia, before travelling up to Hawaii via the Marquesas and Society Islands.
Rémy's most significant collections of ethnographic material and botanical specimens were made on the Hawaiian islands before early 1855, when he left to spend a sojourn in San Francisco with Rev. Julius Brenchley (known for his placing of a plaque at the site of David Douglas' grave in Hawaii). The pair visited Salt Lake City in mid-1855, and Rémy then took passage from San Francisco to Central America. From Mexico, Rémy went to Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and Chile, collecting plants on the Andean peaks of Pichincha, Cotopaxi and Chimborazo in late 1856. During his time in the Americas, Rémy sent some 720 plants from Hawaii to Paris and 320 from California. He then sent about 50 from Ecuador in 1857.
On his return Rémy published Histoire de l'Archipel Havaiien (1862). He also contributed to Claude Gay's Flora Chilena. He made another expedition in 1863-1864, making a few collections in Central Asia, Tibet and the Himalayas. Ostensibly travelling under the auspices of the Paris Natural History Museum, he does not seem to have been as active a collector on this journey, perhaps due to contracting dysentery in Bengal before his trek into the Himalayas. Back in France, Rémy settled at Louvency, where he was born, and spent his last years here. The genus Remya Hillebr. ex Benth. & Hook.f. and species including Delissea remyi (Rock) H.St.John and Lobelia remyi Rock are named in his honour.
Sources:
D. Clos, 1893, Bulletin de la Société Botanique de France, 40: 339
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 V. Unpublished Exsiccatae: I. Collectors", Memoirs of the New York Botanical Garden, 19(3): 385-386.
