- Alexandre de Cassini
Count Alexandre Henri Gabriel de Cassini (1781-1832) was a French
botanist and naturalist, who specialised in the sunflower family (Asteraceae ) (then known as family Compositae).He was the youngest of five children of Jacques Dominique, Comte de Cassini, who had succeeded his father as the director of the
Paris Observatory , famous for completing the map of France. He was also the great-great-grandson of famous Italian-Frenchastronomer ,Giovanni Domenico Cassini , discoverer ofJupiter 's Great Red Spot and theCassini division inSaturn 's rings.The genus "
Cassinia " was named in his honour by the botanist Robert Brown .He named many
flowering plant s 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.In 1825, A. Cassini placed the North American taxa of "Prenanthes" in the new genus "Nabalus", now considered a subgenus of Prenanthes (family Asteraceae, tribe Lactuceae).
In 1828 he named "Dugaldia hoopesii" for the Scottish naturalist Dugald Stewart (1753-1828).
Some genera (originally) named by him :
* "Brachyscome " (1816)
* "Carphephorus "
* "Dracopis " Cassini (Coneflower )
* "Emilia" Cassini (Tasselflower )
* "Eurybia" (Cassini) S.F. Gray
* "Euthamia " (Nuttall) Cassini 1825 (Flat-topped Goldenrod)
* "Facelis " Cassini
* "Guizotia " Cassini (Niger-seed)
* "Helianthus pauciflorus " Nuttall ssp. "pauciflorus", (Stiff Sunflower), also reported as by "Helianthus laetiflorus " var. "rigidus " and "H. rigidus" (Cassini) Desf.
* "Heterotheca " Cassini (Camphorweed, Golden-aster)
* "Ixeris " (Cassini) Cassini
* "Ligularia " Cassini
* "Pallenis " Cassini
* "Pluchea " Cassini (Marsh-Fleabane)
* "Sclerolepis " Cassini (Sclerolepis)
* "Youngia " Cassini (Youngia)
* "Taraxacum " Cassini (dandelion)References
* Cassini, A. H. G. 1813: Cassini, Henri. 1813. Observations sur le style et le stigmate des synanthérées. Journal de Physique, de Chemie, d'Histoire Naturelle et des Arts 76: 97--128, 181--201, 249-75.
* King, Robert M., Paul C. Janaske, & David B. Lellinger (compilers). 1995. Cassini on Compositae II. Monographs in Systematic Botany from the Missouri Botanical Garden 54: [i] -xii, 1-190.
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