Biography

Italian physician and botanist who collected plants in the West Indies and Chile before he died in a shipwreck off Tahiti. Born in Santa Vittoria, near Turin, Piedmont, Carlo Bertero studied botany under Giovanni Balbis (1765-1831) and collected plants from about 1811 in the Piedmont area of his home country. In 1816 travelled further afield when he was appointed ship's surgeon on a voyage to the West Indies. Over the next four years he collected in Guadeloupe, St. Thomas, Santo Domingo, Haiti and Puerto Rico, and spent a year in Colombia, returning to Italy in 1821.

After some years he again set off for the New World in 1827, settling in Chile where he travelled through the province of Aconcagua and the north, going back to his base in Valparaiso in 1829 after passing a winter in Quillota. In 1830 he undertook explorations of the Juan Fernandez Islands with Alexander Caldcleugh, who later had the unenviable task of informing botanists in Europe of Bertero's demise. The Italian had embarked on an expedition to Tahiti in 1831 and was never seen again after the ship left the island in April that year, being lost on the high seas.

"I am most sorry", wrote Caldcleugh to William Hooker in 1833, "to make known to you the fate of poor Bertero. After the voyage which he has made with me, last year, to the island of Juan Fernandez, where he collected with great zeal, and found many interesting things, and some new genera, (amongst them five of the Cichoraceae, tolerably large trees with hollow stems), he remained in Valparaiso for three months for the purpose of arranging and despatching his plants to Paris. At this time a vessel offered to Tahiti, and, led on by that powerful thirst for botanical science, which I have no where seen surpassed, he embarked in her, and remained ten weeks collecting in that island, and then took a passage to return to Valparaiso, with a valuable collection in a new Tahitian schooner, which sailed about eleven months ago, and has not since been heard of".

A catalogue of Bertero's botanical findings in Chile was published in the Mercurio Chilena in 1829 and reprinted with an introduction by Gualterio Looser in 1933-1936. Luigi Colla also published a study of the Chilean collections in the Memoirs of the Turin Academy (1836). His collections from the West Indies were distributed to subscribers by Balbis, whose name is sometimes the only one on the labels.

Biography

Italian physician and botanist who collected plants in the West Indies and Chile before he died in a shipwreck off Tahiti. Born in Santa Vittoria, near Turin, Piedmont, Carlo Bertero studied botany under Giovanni Balbis (1765-1831) and collected plants from about 1811 in the Piedmont area of his home country. In 1816 travelled further afield when he was appointed ship's surgeon on a voyage to the West Indies. Over the next four years he collected in Guadeloupe, St. Thomas, Santo Domingo, Haiti and Puerto Rico, and spent a year in Colombia, returning to Italy in 1821.

After some years he again set off for the New World in 1827, settling in Chile where he travelled through the province of Aconcagua and the north, going back to his base in Valparaiso in 1829 after passing a winter in Quillota. In 1830 he undertook explorations of the Juan Fernandez Islands with Alexander Caldcleugh, who later had the unenviable task of informing botanists in Europe of Bertero's demise. The Italian had embarked on an expedition to Tahiti in 1831 and was never seen again after the ship left the island in April that year, being lost on the high seas.

"I am most sorry", wrote Caldcleugh to William Hooker in 1833, "to make known to you the fate of poor Bertero. After the voyage which he has made with me, last year, to the island of Juan Fernandez, where he collected with great zeal, and found many interesting things, and some new genera, (amongst them five of the Cichoraceae, tolerably large trees with hollow stems), he remained in Valparaiso for three months for the purpose of arranging and despatching his plants to Paris. At this time a vessel offered to Tahiti, and, led on by that powerful thirst for botanical science, which I have no where seen surpassed, he embarked in her, and remained ten weeks collecting in that island, and then took a passage to return to Valparaiso, with a valuable collection in a new Tahitian schooner, which sailed about eleven months ago, and has not since been heard of".

A catalogue of Bertero's botanical findings in Chile was published in the Mercurio Chilena in 1829 and reprinted with an introduction by Gualterio Looser in 1933-1936. Luigi Colla also published a study of the Chilean collections in the Memoirs of the Turin Academy (1836). His collections from the West Indies were distributed to subscribers by Balbis, whose name is sometimes the only one on the labels.

Biography

Italian physician and botanist who collected plants in the West Indies and Chile before he died in a shipwreck off Tahiti. Born in Santa Vittoria, near Turin, Piedmont, Carlo Bertero studied botany under Giovanni Balbis (1765-1831) and collected plants from about 1811 in the Piedmont area of his home country. In 1816 travelled further afield when he was appointed ship's surgeon on a voyage to the West Indies. Over the next four years he collected in Guadeloupe, St. Thomas, Santo Domingo, Haiti and Puerto Rico, and spent a year in Colombia, returning to Italy in 1821.

After some years he again set off for the New World in 1827, settling in Chile where he travelled through the province of Aconcagua and the north, going back to his base in Valparaiso in 1829 after passing a winter in Quillota. In 1830 he undertook explorations of the Juan Fernandez Islands with Alexander Caldcleugh, who later had the unenviable task of informing botanists in Europe of Bertero's demise. The Italian had embarked on an expedition to Tahiti in 1831 and was never seen again after the ship left the island in April that year, being lost on the high seas.

"I am most sorry", wrote Caldcleugh to William Hooker in 1833, "to make known to you the fate of poor Bertero. After the voyage which he has made with me, last year, to the island of Juan Fernandez, where he collected with great zeal, and found many interesting things, and some new genera, (amongst them five of the Cichoraceae, tolerably large trees with hollow stems), he remained in Valparaiso for three months for the purpose of arranging and despatching his plants to Paris. At this time a vessel offered to Tahiti, and, led on by that powerful thirst for botanical science, which I have no where seen surpassed, he embarked in her, and remained ten weeks collecting in that island, and then took a passage to return to Valparaiso, with a valuable collection in a new Tahitian schooner, which sailed about eleven months ago, and has not since been heard of".

A catalogue of Bertero's botanical findings in Chile was published in the Mercurio Chilena in 1829 and reprinted with an introduction by Gualterio Looser in 1933-1936. Luigi Colla also published a study of the Chilean collections in the Memoirs of the Turin Academy (1836). His collections from the West Indies were distributed to subscribers by Balbis, whose name is sometimes the only one on the labels.