Tournefort, Joseph Pitton de

toor-neh-for', Joseph Pitton de (1656-1708), a French botanist. Like other early botanists he was fond of roaming and collecting, and was educated for medicine. By 1681 he had attracted notice by his botanical knowledge and was employed by the famous Jardin des Plantes (plant garden) of Paris to collect new plants. He traveled in Asia Minor, Circassia, Greece, Georgia, and Northern Assyria. Tournefort, who had examined also the Alps and the Pyrenees mountains, was much impressed with the arctic nature of the plants on upper Mount Ararat. He made clear that altitude and latitude have the same effect on vegetation. He enunciated the doctrine that countries having the same climate will have the same plants, and that a peculiarity of climate or soil is accompanied by plants not found elsewhere. His writings, all in Latin, describe ten thousand plants. See De Candolle; Jussieu