Species Nuxia tomentosa

For Jean Baptiste François de Lanux (la Nux) (1702–1772), a French amateur naturalist. He became chief clerk (1725), then commander of Saint-Denis, the administrative capital on Réunion Island (1736). He tried to develop silkworm farming on the island and was interested in all aspects of natural history. He became a correspondent of the Royal Academy of Sciences (1762). Both Mathurin Jacques Brisson (1723–1806), French zoologist (Le Règne Animal, 1756; Ornithologie, 1760) and Georges-Louis Leclerc Comte de Buffon (1707–1788), French naturalist (Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux, 1771–1786), relied on his detailed descriptions and specimens. He described the now extinct lesser Mascarene flying fox, Pteropus subniger.