Etymology of Marsilea:
For Luigi Ferdinando Marsigli (Marsili) (1658–1730), Italian botanist, naturalist, soldier, military engineer, surveyor and author of over 20 publications. He collected a vast amount of scientific information, specimens, antiquities, fossils, instruments, artefacts of flora and fauna etc., which he gave to the senate of Bologna, and founded the Institute of Sciences and Arts (1712). He travelled extensively in Europe, mapping the 850-kilometres-long Hapsburg-Ottoman border, did scientific research on the Danube River written up in Danubius Pannonico-mysicus (1726) and studied the nature of the seas from Marseilles, France, publishing Histoire Physique de la Mer (1725). He was a foreign associate of the Paris Academy of Sciences and a Fellow of the Royal Society of London and of Montpellier.
Protologue:
Sp. Pl., ed. 4 [Willd.] 5: 540 (1810)