"Clerodendrum viscosum", from: Jardin de la Malmaison

Étienne Pierre Ventenat (March 1, 1757 - August 13, 1808) was a French botanist who was a native of Limoges. He was the brother of naturalist Louis Ventenat (1765-1794).

While working as director of the ecclesiastic library Sainte-Geneviève in Paris, Ventenat took a journey to England, where he visited its botanical gardens, which inspired him to pursue a vocation in sciences. Afterwards he studied under and collaborated with botanist Charles Louis L'Héritier de Brutelle (1746-1800). In 1795 he was elected a member of the Institut national des sciences et des arts, later known as the Académie des sciences.

In 1794 he wrote a treatise on the principles of botany titled Principes de botanique, expliqués au Lycée républicain par Ventenat, and after publication became disappointed in its mediocrity, and reportedly made efforts to procure all copies of the book and have them destroyed. In 1798 he published a French translation of Antoine-Laurent de Jussieu's Genera plantarum as Tableau du règne végétal selon la méthode de Jussieu. In this translation Ventenat added information concerning the properties and uses of plants.

In 1799 he published Description des plantes nouvelles et peu connues, cultivées dans le jardin de J.-M. Cels, which described flora in the botanical garden of Jacques Philippe Martin Cels (1740-1806), and in 1803 he published Le Jardin de la Malmaison, which he wrote at the request of Joséphine de Beauharnais (1763-1814), who wished to immortalize the rare species of plants found in the gardens and greenhouses of Château de Malmaison. The illustrations in the two aforementioned works were performed by famed botanical artist Pierre-Joseph Redouté (1759-1840). Ventenat is also credited with continuing the work on Jean Baptiste François Pierre Bulliard's Histoire des champignons de la France, which was a landmark work regarding mushrooms native to France.

References

• This article is based on a translation of an article from the French Wikipedia.