Clovis Thorel, born April 28, 1833, in

Hébécourt, Somme Hébécourt () is a commune in the Somme department in Hauts-de-France in northern France. Geography The commune is situated on the N1 road, south of Amiens. Population See also *Communes of the Somme department The following is a list o ...

, France, died September 11, 1911, in

Bagnoles-de-l'Orne Bagnoles-de-l'Orne is a former commune in the Orne department in northwestern France. On 1 January 2000, Tessé-la-Madeleine and Bagnoles-de-l'Orne merged becoming one town called Bagnoles-de-l'Orne, however, it adopted the former Insee code of ...

, was a French

botanist Botany, also called plant science, is the branch of natural science and biology studying plants, especially Plant anatomy, their anatomy, Plant taxonomy, taxonomy, and Plant ecology, ecology. A botanist or plant scientist is a scientist who s ...

, explorer of

Indochina Mainland Southeast Asia (historically known as Indochina and the Indochinese Peninsula) is the continental portion of Southeast Asia. It lies east of the Indian subcontinent and south of Mainland China and is bordered by the Indian Ocean to th ...

and doctor. A significant number of plant species are named after him and he described 4,203 species himself.

Biography

Born in 1833 in Vers-Hébécourt, Thorel attended medical school from the age of 17, against the advice of his parents, modest textile workers who wanted him to continue their trade. He financed his studies by being a chemistry technician: becoming an associate then an intern of hospitals in Amiens. On the death of his mother, he enlisted as a third-class auxiliary surgeon in the Imperial Navy in 1861. He was immediately assigned to

Cochinchina Cochinchina or Cochin-China (, ; ; ; ; ) is a historical exonym and endonym, exonym for part of Vietnam, depending on the contexts, usually for Southern Vietnam. Sometimes it referred to the whole of Vietnam, but it was commonly used to refer t ...

, where he worked at the Saigon hospital and devoted his leisure time to botany. In 1866, he participated in the French

Mekong expedition of 1866–1868 The Mekong expedition of 1866–1868, conceived and promoted by a group of French colonial officers and launched under the leadership of captain Ernest Doudard de Lagrée, was a naval exploration and scientific expedition of the Mekong River on b ...

under the direction of the frigate captain

Ernest Doudart de Lagrée Ernest Marc Louis de Gonzague Doudart de Lagrée (; 31 March 1823 – 12 March 1868) was the leader of the French Mekong Expedition of 1866-1868. He was born in Saint-Vincent-de-Mercuze near Grenoble, France, and graduated from the École Pol ...

. It aims were to carry out geographic and biological studies and to find a novel route to China: travelling up the

Mekong river The Mekong or Mekong River ( , ) is a transboundary river in East Asia and Southeast Asia. It is the world's List of rivers by length, twelfth-longest river and List of longest rivers of Asia, the third-longest in Asia with an estimated l ...

, visiting the temples of Angkor, crossing present-day Laos, then crossing

Tonkin Tonkin, also spelled Tongkin, Tonquin or Tongking, is an exonym referring to the northern region of Vietnam. During the 17th and 18th centuries, this term referred to the domain '' Đàng Ngoài'' under Trịnh lords' control, including both the ...

to reach

Yunnan Yunnan; is an inland Provinces of China, province in Southwestern China. The province spans approximately and has a population of 47.2 million (as of 2020). The capital of the province is Kunming. The province borders the Chinese provinces ...

, via the high mountains. Captain de Lagrée died and the exhausted and sick survivors reached

Shanghai Shanghai, Shanghainese: , Standard Chinese pronunciation: is a direct-administered municipality and the most populous urban area in China. The city is located on the Chinese shoreline on the southern estuary of the Yangtze River, with the ...

in June 1868, having covered 8,800 km in two years. In 1868, he was appointed knight of the

Legion of Honour The National Order of the Legion of Honour ( ), formerly the Imperial Order of the Legion of Honour (), is the highest and most prestigious French national order of merit, both military and Civil society, civil. Currently consisting of five cl ...

Napoleon III Napoleon III (Charles-Louis Napoléon Bonaparte; 20 April 18089 January 1873) was President of France from 1848 to 1852 and then Emperor of the French from 1852 until his deposition in 1870. He was the first president, second emperor, and last ...

. Upon his return to metropolitan France in 1870, he defended his doctoral thesis in medicine entitled ''Notes médicales du voyage d'exploration du Mékong''. It lists the diseases observed in these countries and described exotic plants, such as "''

Glycosmis ''Glycosmis'' is a genus of flowering plants in the citrus family, Rutaceae and tribe Clauseneae. It is in the subfamily Aurantioideae, which also includes genus ''Citrus''. It is a genus of the subtribe Clauseninae, which are known technically ...

cochinchinensis''" (synonym of ''

Buchanania ''Buchanania'' is a genus of plants in the mango and cashew family Anacardiaceae, native to areas from India to southern China, and southwards to northern Australia and the western Pacific. Description This genus consists of trees with , un ...

cochinchinensis''), and their therapeutic properties. He wrote the ethnographic part of the report of the expedition, as well as the chapter devoted to agriculture and botany. He left the Navy in 1871, when the

French Third Republic The French Third Republic (, sometimes written as ) was the system of government adopted in France from 4 September 1870, when the Second French Empire collapsed during the Franco-Prussian War, until 10 July 1940, after the Fall of France durin ...

was established, to open a medical office in the Passy district. Due to lack of finances, he gave up a project for publication of a flora of

. In 1906, he donated his herbarium and nine manuscript volumes describing 4,203 species to the

Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle The French National Museum of Natural History ( ; abbr. MNHN) is the national natural history museum of France and a of higher education part of Sorbonne University. The main museum, with four galleries, is located in Paris, France, within the Ja ...

in Paris. The last twenty years of his life, he devoted himself to the study of the thermal properties of the great source of Bagnoles-de-l'Orne, where he died in 1911.

Honours

In 1908, botanist

François Gagnepain François Gagnepain (23 September 1866 – 25 January 1952) was a French botanist. The standard botanical author abbreviation Gagnep. is applied to plants described by Gagnepain. With Achille Eugène Finet, he named a number of species with ...

published '' Neothorelia'' is a

monotypic genus In biology, a monotypic taxon is a taxonomic group (taxon) that contains only one immediately subordinate taxon. A monotypic species is one that does not include subspecies or smaller, infraspecific taxa. In the case of genera, the term "unispe ...

flowering plant Flowering plants are plants that bear flowers and fruits, and form the clade Angiospermae (). The term angiosperm is derived from the Ancient Greek, Greek words (; 'container, vessel') and (; 'seed'), meaning that the seeds are enclosed with ...

s from

Laos Laos, officially the Lao People's Democratic Republic (LPDR), is the only landlocked country in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by Myanmar and China to the northwest, Vietnam to the east, Cambodia to the southeast, and Thailand to the west and ...

, belonging to the family

Capparaceae The Capparaceae (or Capparidaceae), commonly known as the caper family, are a family of plants in the order Brassicales. As currently circumscribed, the family contains 15 genera and about 430 species. The largest genera are ''Capparis'' (about 1 ...

and named in Thorel's honour.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Thorel, Clovis Explorers of Asia 19th-century French explorers 19th-century French botanists People of French Indochina 1860s in Vietnam 20th-century French botanists