Two Brothers botanists: Mexican plants in French herbaria (Part 1)

By Louise Couëffé, University of Angers

In Western France, several botanists obtained plants from Mexico. Eugène Monguillon (1865-1940), who was a French school teacher and amateur of Botany, had in his collection of exotic lichens 19 specimens from Mexico. Hector Léveillé, a famous botanist who founded the Académie Internationale de Géographie Botanique, studied some of the specimens they collected and published some articles about them. Finally, the Université catholique de l’Ouest conserved a collection of Lichens from Mexico which pertained to Harmand, a French amateur of Botany specialised in the study of Lichens. The aim of this research was to try to understand this circulation of plants from the bottom up, trying to follow the plants from their collection to their transportation and conservation in various collections, between Mexico and Western France, but also all over the world (United States, Brazil, Russia…). However, if the specimens conserved in great scientific institutions were studied by conservators, the scarce specimens conserved in amateurs’ collections are less known.

Those Mexican plants were mainly collected by Brother Arsène Brouard and Brother Adelme-Nicolas, who arrived in Mexico in 1906, when the law Combe (1904) prohibited several religious congregations to teach in France. They were both Brothers of Christian Schools, members of the same congregation as Brother Joseph Héribaud, a famous French botanist. Brother Arsène was born in 1867, and was the assistant of Edouard Lamy de la Chapelle, a French botanist specialised in the study of Lichens, from 1892 to 1894. After some years working in trade, he entered the congregation of the Brothers of Christian Schools in 1895 and became a science teacher in Aurillac, where he went on practicing botany. Brother Adelme-Nicolas was born in 1861. If there are not many pieces of information about his practice of Botany before his departure to Mexico in 1906, he promised to Brother Héribaud to send him plants from Mexico, which suggested that he collected and studied plants before leaving. 

They arrived in Puebla in 1906, in the college of San Pedro and San Pablo. Brother Adelme-Nicolas stayed there until 19013, before being sent to San Borja, a school of agriculture founded by the Brothers in 1911 near Mexico. Brother Arsène Brouard stayed there until 1909. Then he was sent to Morelia, in the Institucion del Sagrado Corazon, where he stayed until 1913. From 1913 to 1914, he taught in the school of agriculture of San Borja. In 1914 he spent a few months in Querétaro before going to Cuba. He thought he had to join the army because of the First World War, but instead he was sent to the United State to go on teaching. They practiced botany as amateurs in their spare time. 

From 1906 to 1909, they both collected plants in the surroundings of Puebla, then around the other cities where they lived. Their geographic area was limited by their religious and teaching functions as well as by the political context in Mexico. The Revolution of 1910 caused them to wear weapons for security when they went on excursions. Those excursions took place during their vacations or on Thursdays. These excursions took on a collective nature, wherein the brother collected plants with other brothers or their students. Brother Nicolas “took advantage of the holidays to indulge in frequent excursions from which he returned laden with a large packet of rare plants, gathered sometimes on high mountains, sometimes at the bottom of the barrancas”. They collected mainly flowering plants, lichens, and mosses. From 1909 in Morelia, Brother Arsène also began to collect insects, minerals and fossils. He and the others would return to the school where the plants were pressed, studied to find their name (but it was not always possible to identify them), labelled with their name, the place and date of collection and the name of the collector, before being ordered in herbaria or sent to others botanists for identification and collection. Indeed, if some scarce plants arrived in Western France, a lot of them are also conserved in many collections all over the world, which suggests that some elements of their networks of circulation were present during the period of collection in Mexico and afterwards.

From 1906 to 1914, the plants were mainly sent to Brother Héribaud, in Clermont-Ferrand. First, the aim was to identify the specie of the plants collected: for this, Brother Arsène sent numbered plants to Brother Héribaud: the number was inscribed in the labels of the plants, in the list sent to Brother Héribaud, and in the catalogue written by Brother Arsène. It allowed them to follow the plants and their identification in spite of the circulation of numerous specimens: Brother Héribaud sent back the list with the names to Brother Arsène, which could inscribe the names of the species in his herbarium and his catalogue. Brother Héribaud also sent plants to other botanists for identification, such as A. Daveau, director of the Botanical Garden in Montpellier. In 1910, A. Daveau, who got him in contact with Bouly de Lesdain, a botanist specialised in the study of lichens, and with Jules Cardot, specialised in the study of mosses. However, in this period, he seemed to centralize the main part of Mexican collects to redistribute them. If they were mainly sent to France, some of them were also given to Mexican collectors. In 1909, when Brother Arsène was sent to Morelia, he gave plants to other religious institutions (such as seminaries) and to Mariano Martinez Solorzano, conservator of the museum of Natural History of Morelia (it appears his work was not extended to Puebla). Brother Arsène also took part in the first scientific congress of Mexico in 1912, under the name of “Arsenio Brouard”, where he presented a first essay on the Mexican Flora (partly thanks to the identifications sent by French botanists) which received a “honourable mention, in virtue of being a highly interesting work for the study of national botany”.

Figure 1: Musée vert du Mans. Herbier Monguillon, Lichens exotiques. Lichen from Mexico collected by Brother Arsène, 1910. (Credit: N. Morel)

(continue to the Part 2)


OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Nathalie Richard (June 8, 2022). Two Brothers botanists: Mexican plants in French herbaria (Part 1). SciCoMove — Scientific Collections on the Move. Retrieved May 19, 2025 from https://doi.org/10.58079/twso


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