author
José Mariano da Conceição Velloso
1742–1811
A Franciscan friar, teacher, and botanist from colonial Brazil, he became best known for documenting the plants of Rio de Janeiro in the monumental Flora Fluminensis. His work helped preserve an early scientific record of Brazilian flora and still echoes in botanical history.
1 Audiobook
Memoria sobre a cultura da Urumbeba e sobre criação da Cochonilha
by Nicolas-Joseph Thiéry de Menonville, Claude-Louis Berthollet, José Mariano da Conceição Velloso
About the author
Born in 1742 in what is now Tiradentes, Minas Gerais, José Mariano da Conceição Velloso was a Brazilian Franciscan friar whose career joined religious life with scholarship. He is remembered as a priest, teacher, missionary, and naturalist, with a lasting reputation in botany.
While living in Rio de Janeiro, he studied and cataloged Brazilian plants and became closely associated with Flora Fluminensis, an ambitious survey of the region’s vegetation. Although the work was published only after his lifetime, it became one of the important early records of Brazil’s plant life and helped secure his place in the history of science.
Velloso died in Rio de Janeiro in 1811. Beyond his scientific writing, he is also noted in historical sources for his broader literary and scholarly work, reflecting the wide-ranging curiosity of a learned figure working in colonial Brazil.