Born in
Marseille, at the age of 16, he entered the religious order of the
Minims. He devoted himself to the study of
mathematics and
physics, made physical instruments, and was an excellent draughtsman, painter, and
turner. On being sent to the French monastery of
Trinità dei Monti at
Rome, Plumier studied
botany under two members of the order, and especially under
Cistercian botanist,
Paolo Boccone. After his return to France, he became a pupil of
Joseph Pitton de Tournefort, whom he accompanied on botanical expeditions. He also explored the coasts of
Provence and
Languedoc. His work began in 1689, when, by order of the government, he accompanied collector Joseph Donat Surian to the French
Antilles, as Surian's illustrator and writer. They remained a year and a half. As this first journey, written up by Plumier as ''Description des Plantes d'Amérique
(1693), proved very successful, Plumier was appointed royal botanist. In 1693, by command of Louis XIV, he made his second journey, and in 1695 his third journey to the Antilles. While in the West Indies, he was assisted by the Dominican botanist Jean-Baptiste Labat. The material gathered was prodigious: besides the Nova Plantarum Americanarum Genera'' it filled the volumes of Plumier's
Filicetum Americanum (1703) and several shorter pieces for the
Journal des Savants and the
Memoires de Trévoux. In 1704, with his ''Traité des Fougères de l'Amérique'' in the press and about to start on his fourth journey, intending to visit the home of the true
cinchona tree in
Peru, he was taken ill with
pleurisy and died at
Puerto de Santa Maria near
Cádiz. At his death Plumier left 31 manuscript volumes containing notes and descriptions, and about 6,000 drawings, 4,000 of which were of plants, while the remainder reproduced American animals of nearly all classes, especially birds and fishes. The botanist
Herman Boerhaave had 508 of these drawings copied at Paris; these were published later in a
hommage by Burmann, Professor of Botany at Amsterdam, under the title: "Plantarum americanarum, quas olim Carolus Plumerius botanicorum princeps detexit", fasc. I-X (Amsterdam, 1755–1760), containing 262 plates. Plumier also wrote treatises for the
Journal des Savants and for the
Mémoires de Trévoux. Through his observations in Martinique, Plumier proved that the
cochineal belongs to the animal kingdom and should be classed among the insects. == Accomplishments ==