Biography

French botanist and explorer. Bonpland was famed for his travels in South America at the turn of the 18th century, during which he and Alexander von Humboldt collected thousands upon thousands of natural history specimens unknown to European science.

Aimé Bonpland (né Goujaud) was born near La Rochelle on the west coast of France. He initially studied medicine in Paris, where his work was interrupted by the French Revolutionary Wars and in 1795 he was temporarily required to serve as a naval surgeon in Toulon. Returning to his studies under the supervision of J.N. Corvisart, natural history, especially botany, became his overriding interest. In 1798 he met a kindred spirit eager to travel and discover the wonders of nature, Alexander von Humboldt.

Humboldt was a Prussian aristocrat who had inherited a fortune and the pair quickly formulated a plan to explore parts of South America using his considerable funds. Humboldt managed to obtain permission from the Spanish government to explore its colonial territories (usually closed to outsiders) and in 1799 he and Bonpland embarked on an incredible five-year exploration of Mexico, Colombia and the Amazon and Orinoco rivers; a journey that would make their reputations in 19th century science and net a fantastic haul of botanical, zoological, geological and anthropological collections.

The expedition took the duo across the Atlantic from La Coruña in Spain to their starting point on the South American continent: Cumaná, Venezuela. They made preliminary excursions in the Venezuelan states of Sucre and Monagas, going on to Caracas and exploring the coastline before setting off down the Orinoco river on a true voyage of discovery. On reaching the Brazilian-Colombian border there was a brief setback when Humboldt was arrested by the Portuguese authorities on suspicion of being part of a Spanish border survey. After his release, the pair returned north to Ciudad Bolivar, where it was Bonpland's turn to suffer a misfortune, falling seriously ill for some time.

On Bonpland's recovery, the pair headed for Cuba where they made more collections before sailing to Cartagena, Colombia. Taking a canoe up the Rio Magdalena, they transferred onto mules in Honda to transport them to Santa Fe de Bogota. Via the Rio Cauca they made their way to Popayan and on to Quito, Ecuador. By this time it was 1802 and towards the end of the year they had reached Peru, where they made their base in Lima for two months to prepare their collections.1803 was spent in Mexico, where they travelled between Acapulco and Mexico City, then sailed down to Cuba again to pick up their collections left there in safekeeping. Finally they visited the United States for several weeks before their grand tour of the Americas was complete.

Back in Europe, Bonpland was appointed superintendent of the gardens of Malmaison, where the Empress Josephine welcomed a gift of exotic seeds from him and Napoleon gave him a pension. He published some works during this time, including a monograph on melastomes and descriptions of his incredible botanical collections. Published between 1808 and 1816, the work was entitled Plantes Equinoxiales.

After the final volume of his oeuvre was complete, Bonpland was hungry to experience life in the South American continent once more and made for Buenos Aires where he was invited to take up a professorial post at the university. He also worked as a physician and began to engage in large scale agriculture, breeding commercial plants and growing various crops on plantations as well as once more exploring the territory. However, the Paraguyan dictator José Gaspar de Francia put a halt to Bonpland's activities in the early 1820s, arresting him as a French spy and destroying his crops. He was detained for the rest of the decade near Santa Rosa, southern Paraguay.

Freed in about 1830, Bonpland's movements over the next 25 years are somewhat confused in records, but it seems he spent some time in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil and in Uruguay before living for several years in San Borga, Corrientes, where he ran a successful citrus plantation and was curator of the natural history museum. He married an indigenous woman with whom he had a family and spent the last five years of his life in Santa Ana, Misiones province (Argentina). A small town in the province is named after him, as is a lunar crater and the genus Bonplandia Cav. Despite never returning to Europe, he was much fêted in his homeland and in Germany, being named a member of the Academia Caesaro-Leopoldina in Halle the year before his death. His personal herbarium of 880 specimens went to Paris in 1833.

Sources:
R. Bouvier, 1948, Der Botaniker von Malmaison: Aimé Bonpland, ein Freund Alexander von Humboldts
R.F. Erickson, Aimé Bonpland (1773-1858), MBG Rare Books:
http://www.illustratedgarden.org/mobot/rarebooks/author.asp?creator=Bonpland,+Aim%C3%A9&creatorID=10, accessed 23 November 2011
R. McVaugh, 1955, "The American Collections of Humboldt and Bonpland, as described in the Systema Vegetabilium of Roemer and Schultes", Taxon, 4: 78-86
George Sarton, 1943, "Aimé Bonpland", Isis, 34: 385-399
G. Sayre, 1975, "Cryptogamae Exsiccatae: an annotated bibliography of exsiccatae of algae, lichens, hepaticae, and music. V. Unpublished Exsiccatae: I. Collectors", Memoirs of the New York Botanical Garden, 19(3): 294-295.