Species Adansonia digitata

For Michel Adanson (1727–1806), French botanist and naturalist of Scottish descent. He studied at the University of Paris (1741–1746) and conducted research in the Canary Islands (1748). He also did research in Senegal (1749–1753) on its animals, plants, shells, people, commerce and languages as reflected in his Histoire Naturelle du Sénégal (1757). In 1763, in his Familles Naturelles des Plantes, he proposed a new method of plant classification based on a sum of their characteristics rather than Linnaeus’s essentialist system (based on flower morphology). He also published monographs on the Baobab tree and catfish. In 1765, he began a massive encyclopaedia (27 volumes) entitled l’Ordre Universel de la Nature. This was rejected by the Académie des Sciences in 1774, as being too large.