Jean-Baptiste Leschenault de La Tour

Jean-Baptiste Louis Claude Théodore Leschenault de La Tour (13 November 1773 – 14 March 1826) was a French botanist and ornithologist.

Born at the family seat (since 1718),[1] Le Villard, near Chalon-sur-Saône, Leschenault de la Tour arrived in Paris after the death of his father, a judge at Lyon.

Forced to spend the next three years on Java he used the time to make the first thorough botanical investigation of the island, which had not previously been visited by naturalists except briefly by Carl Peter Thunberg.

Following the Napoleonic Wars, in May 1816 Leschenault travelled to India to collect plants and establish a botanical garden at Pondicherry.

Though Leschenault published little, his collections were subsequently used by other French botanists, including Aimé Bonpland, René Louiche Desfontaines, Antoine Laurent de Jussieu, Jacques Labillardière and Étienne Pierre Ventenat.