The dynasty of Jussieu, of which the Parisians are familiar with the metro and the faculty of the same name, has deserved well of the fatherland. They had four sons. Christophe took over the dispensary apothecary family in the lyon region. Joseph went with La Condamine to South America to measure the earth meridian. Antoine, a physician and professor of botany at the Jardin du Roi, the current Jardin des plantes, played an important role in the acclimatization of plants for agricultural purposes in the west Indies, such as coffee. Finally, Bernard created for king Louis XV, a school of botany at the Trianon and devised on this occasion a new classification of plant, much more natural than that of Linnaeus.
On the cobblestone paris
It was he who, in 1734, during a trip in England, lives back by Sloanne, curator of Kew gardens, two young seedlings of Lebanon cedar, a species still very rare in Europe. Bernard de Jussieu survived the crossing of the Channel and arrived in Paris, with its modest but precious cargo. The King’s Garden was in sight when… crash! The young cedars, and the pot crashed upon the pavement of paris. The botanist association promptly his talents to those of the gardener who was having a nap in him. He saved two young coniferous trees by replanting in its… hat, promoted to the noble rank of a pottery horticulture.
The oldest cedar of Lebanon in France
one was given to Daniel-Charles Trudaine, then intendant-general of finances and director of nurseries royal who drove in the park of his château de Montigny-Lencoup, Seine-et-Marne. He developed beautifully until 1935, when a storm struck him down. The other was planted in the Garden of the King, at the foot of the hill of the Maze near the entrance on the rue Geoffroy-Saint-Hilaire. He’s still there. The age of 284 years, it is the oldest cedar of Lebanon in France.
