Michel Étienne Descourtilz

Michel Étienne Descourtilz (25 November 1775, Boiste near Pithiviers – 1835 or 1836, Paris), was a French physician, botanist and historian of the Haitian Revolution. He was the father of illustrator Jean-Théodore Descourtilz, with whom he sometimes collaborated.[1]

Plate of a pineapple from Descourtiz, 1877

In 1799, after completing his medical studies he traveled to Charleston, South Carolina and Santiago, Cuba, arriving in Haiti on 2 April.[2] Despite a passport from Toussaint Louverture and serving as physician with the forces of Jean-Jacques Dessalines, he was in constant danger.[3] His plant collections were mostly from between Port-au-Prince and Cap-Haïtien and along the Artibonite River.[2] All his natural history collections and many drawings were destroyed during the course of the revolution. In 1803 he returned to France, worked as a physician in a hospital at Beaumont and served as president of the Paris Linnean Society.[2]

As a taxonomist he circumscribed the genus Nauchea (family Fabaceae).[4]