Organisation(s)
FI (main), PC (main), AV, B, BM, BR, DS, E, G-DEL, HBG, K, L, LY, LZ, OXF, P, UPS
Associate(s)
Algérie, Commission Scientifique (1840-1842) (specimens to)
Leprieur, François Mathias René (1799-1869) (co-collector)
Robin, C.P. (1821-1885) (co-author)
Biography
French military surgeon and botanist. Born in Vaudois in 1784, Jean François Camille Montagne embarked at the age of 14 as an assistant helmsman on the French military expedition to Egypt. He served in the naval administration in Alexandria as secretary to the military chief of the Navy until the capitulation of the French in 1801. On being repatriated to France, he undertook medical studies in Paris and qualified as a military surgeon in 1804. He was stationed at the military hospital at Boulogne-sur-Mer until 1806 when he was sent to Naples with the French army under Joseph-Napoleon Bonaparte. Montagne was transferred to the King's Guard in 1807 and served in the grenadier regiment, becoming chevalier de l'ordre royal des Deux Siciles in 1808 and, eventually, chief surgeon of the royal army in Naples.
During the Neapolitan War in 1815, he was captured by the Austrians and imprisoned in the fortress of Arad. For a few years after his liberation he had a private medical practice in Paris, but in 1819 he was recalled to duty. For his conduct during the siege of Pampelune in 1823 he was given the Croix d'honneur. He retired from the army in 1832 as head of the hospital at Sedan. The remainder of his life was devoted to the study of cryptogams. He had studied botany as a medical student under Laurent de Jussieu, René Desfontaines, and Claude Richard, and throughout his military service he had collected plants.
Even though he seems never to have visited the colony himself, he was one of the first to study the mycology of French Guiana, thanks to the collector Charles Eugene Leprieur, who sent him numerous specimens. His principal work, Sylloge Generum Specierumque Cryptogamorum, was published in Paris in 1856. He was a member of the Académie des Sciences (1853), an Officer of the Légion d'Honneur (1858) and, as a veteran of the wars of the Revolution and the Empire, a recipient of the medal of Sainte-Hélène (1857). He died in Paris in 1866. The genus Camillea (Xylariaceae) was dedicated to him by Elias Magnus Fries in 1849.
References
Brummitt, R.K. & Powell, C.E., Authors Pl. Names (1992): 434; Chaudhri, M.N., Vegter, H.I. & de Bary, H.A., Index Herb. Coll. I-L (1972): 433; Jackson, B.D., Bull. Misc. Inform. Kew (1901): 47; Lanjouw, J. & Stafleu, F.A., Index Herb. Coll. A-D (1954): 31; Vegter, H.I., Index Herb. Coll. M (1976): 552;
