Jacques Philippe Martin Cels

Jacques Philippe Martin Cels (15 June 1740 – 15 May 1806) was a French botanist specializing in horticulture.

Ruined when the French Revolution abolished his position, he started a botanical garden in which he cultivated foreign plants for sale, contributing to the growing public appetite for exotic flowers.

He received and acclimatized numerous North American plants brought back by André Michaux and Louis-Augustin Bosc d'Antic.

The species in his garden were described by the botanist Étienne Pierre Ventenat (1757–1808) and illustrated by Pierre-Joseph Redouté (1759–1840) in Description des plantes nouvelles et peu connues, cultivées dans le jardin de J.-M. Cels, published in Paris in 1799.

A second illustrated work with illustrations by a "student of Redouté", Pancrace Bessa, appeared in 1803, Choix de plantes :dont la plupart sont cultivées dans le jardin de Cels, accessible at version numérique sur Botanicus.