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Charles Plumier, French friar, botanist and botanical explorer, 1762. Plumier (1646-1702) was born in Marseilles. Appointed royal botanist by Louis XIV in 1693, he made expeditions to the West Indies and Central America. He gave the first accurate account of the source of the red dye cochineal, which is an insect, not the plant on which it is found. Linnaeus named the genus Plumeria after him. From Histoire des Philosophes Modernes by Alexandre Saverien. (Paris, 1762).