Michaux père botanized in North America for nearly a dozen years (1785–96) as royal collector for France.

[1][2] Michaux accompanied his father, André Michaux (1746–1802), to the United States, and his Histoire des arbres forestiers de l'Amérique septentrionale (three volumes, 1810–13) contains the results of his explorations, giving an account of the distribution and the scientific classification of the principal American timber trees north of Mexico and east of the Rocky Mountains.

[3] Under the title The North American Sylva Michaux's work was translated by Augustus Lucas Hillhouse.

[4] The work was reissued in 1852 by Robert Smith of Philadelphia, again in three quarto volumes, and again with 156 hand colored lithographs of American trees and shrubs.

[5] François André Michaux published this monumental work[6][7][8][9] first in French and then in English translation, between 1811 and 1819.