Biography

Swiss naturalist and museum administrator in Geneva. Moricand's first profession was as a commercial traveller in Italy for the Swiss watch industry, a trade he was entered into by his parents at the age of just 12. He did not return to Geneva, his birthplace, until the Restoration years. In Italy, Moricand met Italian scholars and collected plants and minerals in Tuscany, Naples and Venice. Returning to Geneva in 1814 he continued to pursue his interests, making the acquaintance of A.P. de Candolle, with whose help he dedicated himself to studying botany and determining the specimens he had collected in Italy. The first volume of his Flora Veneta was published in 1820. Following this, he began to look at exotic vegetation, especially from South America, and in 1833-1846 published Plantes nouvelles d'Amérique, based chiefly on collections of J.L. Berlandier, J.S. Blanchet and J.A. Pavón. Moricand used his connections with these collectors and others to boost the collections of Geneva's natural history museum, of which he was a founding member, treasurer and secretary. The items he helped to acquire for the museum were not only botanical but also zoological, such as a significant number of fish sent from Blanchet, based in Bahia, Brazil. Moricand's herbarium, numbering more than 54,000 specimens at the end of his life, contained material from all over the world, again collected by him and those with whom he had built relationships. It was given to the Conservatoire botanique de la ville de Genève by his son in 1908. A.P. de Candolle named the genus Moricandia DC. (Brassicaceae) for him.

Biography

Swiss naturalist and museum administrator in Geneva. Moricand's first profession was as a commercial traveller in Italy for the Swiss watch industry, a trade he was entered into by his parents at the age of just 12. He did not return to Geneva, his birthplace, until the Restoration years. In Italy, Moricand met Italian scholars and collected plants and minerals in Tuscany, Naples and Venice. Returning to Geneva in 1814 he continued to pursue his interests, making the acquaintance of A.P. de Candolle, with whose help he dedicated himself to studying botany and determining the specimens he had collected in Italy. The first volume of his Flora Veneta was published in 1820. Following this, he began to look at exotic vegetation, especially from South America, and in 1833-1846 published Plantes nouvelles d'Amérique, based chiefly on collections of J.L. Berlandier, J.S. Blanchet and J.A. Pavón. Moricand used his connections with these collectors and others to boost the collections of Geneva's natural history museum, of which he was a founding member, treasurer and secretary. The items he helped to acquire for the museum were not only botanical but also zoological, such as a significant number of fish sent from Blanchet, based in Bahia, Brazil. Moricand's herbarium, numbering more than 54,000 specimens at the end of his life, contained material from all over the world, again collected by him and those with whom he had built relationships. It was given to the Conservatoire botanique de la ville de Genève by his son in 1908. A.P. de Candolle named the genus Moricandia DC. (Brassicaceae) for him.

Biography

Swiss naturalist and museum administrator in Geneva. Moricand's first profession was as a commercial traveller in Italy for the Swiss watch industry, a trade he was entered into by his parents at the age of just 12. He did not return to Geneva, his birthplace, until the Restoration years. In Italy, Moricand met Italian scholars and collected plants and minerals in Tuscany, Naples and Venice. Returning to Geneva in 1814 he continued to pursue his interests, making the acquaintance of A.P. de Candolle, with whose help he dedicated himself to studying botany and determining the specimens he had collected in Italy. The first volume of his Flora Veneta was published in 1820. Following this, he began to look at exotic vegetation, especially from South America, and in 1833-1846 published Plantes nouvelles d'Amérique, based chiefly on collections of J.L. Berlandier, J.S. Blanchet and J.A. Pavón. Moricand used his connections with these collectors and others to boost the collections of Geneva's natural history museum, of which he was a founding member, treasurer and secretary. The items he helped to acquire for the museum were not only botanical but also zoological, such as a significant number of fish sent from Blanchet, based in Bahia, Brazil. Moricand's herbarium, numbering more than 54,000 specimens at the end of his life, contained material from all over the world, again collected by him and those with whom he had built relationships. It was given to the Conservatoire botanique de la ville de Genève by his son in 1908. A.P. de Candolle named the genus Moricandia DC. (Brassicaceae) for him.