author
Alphonse de Candolle
1806–1893
A leading 19th-century botanist, he helped turn the study of plants into a more global science by tracing where species came from and how they spread. His books linked botany with history, geography, and agriculture in ways that still feel surprisingly modern.
1 Audiobook
Origin of Cultivated Plants The International Scientific Series Volume XLVIII
by Alphonse de Candolle
About the author
Born in Paris in 1806 and later based in Geneva, Alphonse de Candolle was a French-Swiss botanist from a remarkable scientific family. He was the son of the celebrated botanist Augustin Pyramus de Candolle, and he carried forward his father's work while building a reputation of his own.
He is especially remembered for his research on plant geography and for studying the origins of cultivated plants. Instead of looking at botany in isolation, he drew on historical records, archaeology, language, and agriculture to ask where useful plants first came from and how they moved across the world.
De Candolle also played an important part in organizing botanical science in the 19th century, including work connected with early international rules for naming plants. He died in Geneva in 1893, leaving behind a body of work that helped make botany broader, more comparative, and more international.