Genus Cassinia

For Alexandre Henri Gabriel Comte de Cassini (1781–1832), French botanist and naturalist who came from a family of astronomers and cartographers. In addition to his botanical interests he was a magistrate and an advisor at the supreme court of appeal with a particular interest in teaching. He named many flowering plants and new genera in the sunflower family (Asteraceae), many of them from North America. He published 65 papers and 11 reviews in the (Nouveau) Bulletin des Sciences par la Société Philomatique de Paris between 1812 and 1821. After his first collection, Opuscules phytologiques (1826), he was elected a member of the Academy of Sciences and became an associate in 1831. He died of cholera in 1832. His great-greatgrandfather discovered Jupiter’s Great Red Spot and the Cassini division in Saturn’s rings.