Species Flacourtia inermis

For Étienne de Flacourt (1607–1660), French botanist and traveller, who was appointed governor of Madagascar by the French East India Company in 1648 where he successfully pacified the mutinous French troops on the island, but failed to develop good relations with the indigenous peoples. Upon his return to France in 1655, de Flacourt wrote his Histoire de la Grande Isle Madagascar (1658), the first comprehensive account of the island. Not long after he was appointed director-general of the company, he again returned to Madagascar, but drowned on his voyage home in 1660. He was one of the first Europeans to describe the now extinct flightless elephant bird, Aepyornis maximus.