Biography

Eugène Poilane, coffee planter and botanist, was born at Saint-Sauveur de Landemone, France, where his family were peasants. He arrived in South Vietnam (then known as Cochinchina, a French protectorate) as an artillery worker in 1909. After several years employed at a naval arsenal he met the naturalist Auguste Chevalier, General Inspector of Agriculture and Forestry in Vietnam, who appointed Poilane as a prospector following the First World War.

Poilane went on become a botanist for the Forest Service of Indochina in 1922, travelling throughout the region in this role and collecting plants on the borders of China and Burma for the herbarium in Saigon. In all he collected more than 36,000 specimens between the 1922 and 1947, a number of which were species new to science.

As well as his collecting activities, Poilane was a successful coffee grower, having established a plantation at the village of Khe Sanh in 1918. He also began an experimental orchard, attempting to introduce many types of fruit tree. He fathered ten children at Khe Sanh; five by his first wife, a French woman, and a further five by his second, a Vietnamese.

Poilane died in 1964 when his car was ambushed by the Viet Cong. The genera Poilania Gagnep. and Poilaniella Gagnep. are named in his honour.

Sources:
D.G. Frodin, 2001, Guide to Standard Floras of the World: 894
1964, Bulletin de la Société de Biologie du Viet Nam, 2(1): 3-8.