D. Francisco Manuel de Melo Breyner, 4th Count of Ficalho (27 July 1837 – 19 April 1903), was a Portuguese aristocrat, noted botanist, intellectual and amateur arabist.

[1] A member of the Royal Academy of Sciences, he was the founder of the Lisbon Botanical Garden, established in 1878;[2] Ficalho worked closely with German botanist Edmund Goeze, and later the French Jules Daveau in the selection of plants and trees and in the development of the arboretum, and was deeply committed to the scientific transaction with foreign peers.

[3] As a botanist and taxonomist, Francisco Manuel de Melo Breyner was especially interested in the study of the African flora, namely the Angolan herbarium of Friedrich Welwitsch.

[4] He also wrote Flora dos Lusíadas, published in 1880 to commemorate the tricentennial of the death of Luís de Camões,[1] an account of the plants mentioned in the national epic The Lusiads.

The Count of Ficalho died in his palace in Rua dos Caetanos, parish of Mercês, around half-past four a.m. on 19 April 1903; King Carlos I went there personally that afternoon to pay his respects.