Jacques-Philippe Cornut (1606-1651) was a French physician & botanist. He was the author of Canadensivm planatarvm, aliarúmque nondum editarum historia. Cui adiectum ad calcem Enchiridion botanicvm parisiense, continens indicem plantarum, quae in pagis, siluis, pratis, et montosis iuxta Parisios locis nascuntur (Canadian plants, & other unpublished material listing the plants that are native to the villages, the woods, the meadows, & mountains) (Paris: Simon le Moyne, 1635), Canada at that time considered as stretching from the Saint Lawrence River to Louisiana. Over the course of his career he described 541 species.
The plates of the Canadian flora are attributed to Pierre Valet (1575-1650). Pierre Valet was a French botanical artist, engraver & embroidery designer. French court patronage of botanical painting was initiated by Marie de Medicis of Florence, second wife of Henry IV of France. Under her tutelage Pierre Valet became the French court's first botanical painter.
Despite having compiled these Canadian flora, Jacques-Philippe Cornut never visited the New World, but received most of his plant specimens from Vespasien Robin & his father, Jean, who tended the gardens of Henry IV of France & that of the Paris Faculty of Medicine, & the Morin family, who owned a number of commercial nurseries in Paris. Cornut described & had illustrated more than 30 new species from eastern North America. Linnaeus cited Cornut's work several times in his Species Plantarum.
