Félix Avelar Brotero

Who was Félix Avelar Brotero?

Félix de Avelar Brotero was a Portuguese botanist and professor. He fled to France in 1788 to escape persecution by the Portuguese Inquisition, and there published his Compendio de Botanica in order to earn his living. It immediately established his reputation as a botanist, and upon his return to Portugal in 1790 he was given the chair of botany and agriculture at the University of Coimbra. His two best known works, Flora lusitanica, 1804, and Phytographia Lusitaniae selectior, 1816–1827, were the first lengthy descriptions of native Portuguese plants. As director of the botanical gardens at Coimbra and Ajuda, he reorganized and enlarged them.