Biography

Spanish doctor, botanist and director of the Madrid botanic garden. Mariano Lagasca was born in Encinacorba, in the province of Saragossa. His parents wanted him to follow an ecclesiastical career and so he studied the humanities and philosophy in the house of the Canon Verdejo de Tarragona. This house was frequented by Martí, a wise man who developed Lagasca's inclination towards the natural sciences, and in particular towards botany.

At the age of 19 he decided to pursue a career in medicine and began a course at the University of Valencia (1795-1800), before completing his final year in Madrid in order to develop his interest in botany. While in Valencia Lagasca made frequent excursions around the area, amassing a small herbarium which he took with him to Madrid. Here he was introduced to the eminent botanist A. J. Cavanilles who was impressed with his collection, discovering two new Gramineae species, and in 1801 when Cavanilles was made director of the Botanic Gardens of Madrid he employed Lagasca to assist his work and teaching. Lagasca soon began to publish descriptions of the collections and in 1803 he was commissioned to travel the Peninsula collecting information for a Flora Española.

Following the death of Cavanilles in 1804 Lagasca became vice director of the gardens under F. A. Zea and in 1807 he was promoted to professor of medicinal botany. Continuing his travels Lagasca spent several years in Murcia before returning to Madrid to be named director of the botanic gardens; publishing many important works on topics such as cryptogamic taxonomy, fodder crop species and cereals and studying for his Spanish Flora. During this time he maintained extensive correspondence with botanists throughout Spain and abroad, developing a growing reputation. In 1821 he was responsible for revising and editing the flora of Santa Fé de Bogotá, the specimens for which had arrived in the herbarium of the botanic gardens in 1817. His work, however, was soon interrupted by the Civil War and he became an active member of the liberal Cortes. When King Ferdinand VII was restored to the throne he took revenge on his opponents and Lagasca was disgraced and exiled to England. Having hidden away his most important books and specimens in Seville, he arrived in London in 1824. Unfortunately a mob destroyed most of his collections, though some original types survive in Madrid and Italy.

In a letter to Count Sternberg the Bohemian professor of botany Joseph Agust Schultes wrote: "Poor Lagasca! He had not only lost all his domestic happiness, (his wife and five children being in Cadiz) and his fortune; but also his great herbarium; the manuscript of his Flora of Spain, on which he had been employed for more than twenty years, and which was ready to be printed… All, all were destroyed!" In London Lagasca continued his work on cereals and Umbeliferae which he cultivated in the Chelsea garden and in 1827 he published "Sketches of the botanical, horticultural and rural circumstances of Spain" in The Gardener’s Magazine. He also collected around London and created a Hortus siccus Lundinensis, a herbarium to house his specimens. In 1831 he moved to Jersey due to his health and by 1834 he was once again able to enter Spain. First, however, Lagasca visited Paris in order to finally meet with many of his French correspondents, before travelling via Barcelona to Madrid where he joyfully returned to the Botanic Gardens. In 1837 he was named president of the group of professors in charge of directing the Museum of Natural Sciences, but soon had to return to Barcelona in an attempt to slow the progress of his illness and sadly he died here the following year.

Sources:
Colmiero, M., 1858, La Botánica y Los Botánicos de la Península Hispano-Lusitana. Imprenta y Estereotipia de M. Rivadeneyra. Madrid.
Steele, A. R., 1964, Flowers for the King. Duke University Press, U.S.A.