Volcanic Purple. Erysimum scoparium, Tenerife Wallflower, Pico del Teide, Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain
There was very little in flower in the dryness of the Pico del Teide at this time of the year but I pottered about a bit and in a broomy shrub of Erysimum scoparium found this pretty little inflorescence lifting its heads to the Sun.
Erysimum scoparium was first collected around 1800 by Pierre Marie Auguste Broussonet (1761-1807). Broussonet was a fine classical scholar but his heart went out to natural history in the Linnaean tradition and he specialised in ichthyology, obtaining a doctorate on the breathing of fishes already in 1778. Keen on continuing this work he moved to London to study specimens of fish collected by those great traveling naturalists of the British Empire. But his socio-political heart drew him back to France just before the Revolution of 1789. Intent on improving agriculture Broussonet became a professor of rural economy. Then came the horrors of 1789 and he crossed the Pyrenees to Spain. There and in Morocco he made naturalist collections but also kept an eye out for a political job preferably one that would allow him to continue his researches. Returned to France he soon landed a position as vice-consul at Mogador. The plague drove him and his family to Tenerife in 1799. Here he collected around 1500 specimens, among them this Erysimum. Broussonet was just preparing to describe his collection when he died in 1807.
Our Plant - endemic to the Canary Islands - was first published by Carl Ludwig Willdenow (1765-1812) in 1809 (under the name Cheiranthus scoparius).
Volcanic Purple. Erysimum scoparium, Tenerife Wallflower, Pico del Teide, Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain
There was very little in flower in the dryness of the Pico del Teide at this time of the year but I pottered about a bit and in a broomy shrub of Erysimum scoparium found this pretty little inflorescence lifting its heads to the Sun.
Erysimum scoparium was first collected around 1800 by Pierre Marie Auguste Broussonet (1761-1807). Broussonet was a fine classical scholar but his heart went out to natural history in the Linnaean tradition and he specialised in ichthyology, obtaining a doctorate on the breathing of fishes already in 1778. Keen on continuing this work he moved to London to study specimens of fish collected by those great traveling naturalists of the British Empire. But his socio-political heart drew him back to France just before the Revolution of 1789. Intent on improving agriculture Broussonet became a professor of rural economy. Then came the horrors of 1789 and he crossed the Pyrenees to Spain. There and in Morocco he made naturalist collections but also kept an eye out for a political job preferably one that would allow him to continue his researches. Returned to France he soon landed a position as vice-consul at Mogador. The plague drove him and his family to Tenerife in 1799. Here he collected around 1500 specimens, among them this Erysimum. Broussonet was just preparing to describe his collection when he died in 1807.
Our Plant - endemic to the Canary Islands - was first published by Carl Ludwig Willdenow (1765-1812) in 1809 (under the name Cheiranthus scoparius).