author
Nicolas-Joseph Thiéry de Menonville
1739–1780
Best remembered for one of the strangest missions in botanical history, this French lawyer-turned-botanist traveled secretly into Mexico to obtain the cochineal insect, the source of a prized scarlet dye. His account mixes science, travel writing, and real-world risk.
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 Saint-Mihiel, France, on June 18, 1739, Nicolas-Joseph Thiéry de Menonville first trained in law and became an avocat at the Parlement of Paris before turning to botany. He is chiefly remembered for volunteering to go to Mexico in the 1770s to secure the cochineal insect, then enormously valuable because it produced a brilliant red dye.
That journey made him an unusually adventurous figure in the history of natural history. Working without official papers, he traveled under dangerous conditions and later described the expedition in Voyage à Guaxaca, a work that helped preserve the story of his covert effort to bring cochineal and its host cactus into the French colonial world.
Thiéry de Menonville died in Port-au-Prince, Saint-Domingue, in 1780. Although he is not widely known today, his life stands out for its mix of science, commerce, and espionage at a time when plants, insects, and dyes could shape empires.