Moniz (João Maria)

He was born in Funchal on 23 July 1822, the son of José Inácio Moniz and Dona Marciana Jardim Moniz. In 1849, having previously completed his secondary studies at the lyceum (state secondary school), he was admitted as a trainee clerk in the Funchal Revenue Office (Repartição de Fazenda). In 1860 he was appointed junior clerk in the same department, where he served until 27 June 1895, when he retired, by then holding the rank of officer, which he had attained on 22 August 1883.

He was a distinguished naturalist, and between 1848 and 1855 he assembled an excellent herbarium. Part of it, which had been lent to the botanist Richard Thomas Lowe, was lost in the shipwreck in which that English scholar lost his life. Fresh explorations in the archipelago enabled him to replace the lost specimens with others and to discover various species not previously recorded.

In 1856 Lowe created the genus Monizia, which he dedicated to our distinguished fellow countryman. He accompanied the description of the genus that he published in Booker’s Jornal Botanico with the following words: ‘this name is a tribute to Mr João M. Moniz, a distinguished botanist and successful investigator of the native flora of Madeira, and no less zealous a horticulturist, always actively engaged in introducing rare or new plants to the island and in promoting the advancement of agricultural and horticultural knowledge among his fellow countrymen’.

Three botanical species commemorate the name of J. M. Moniz – Carex Moniziana, Helichrysum Monizii and Scrophularia Moniziana – and two molluscs and an insect were also named after him: the insect is Zargus Monizi and the molluscs are Craspedopoma Monizianum and Helix Moniziana.

João Maria Moniz was the first botanist to record the presence in Madeira of Visnea Mocanera, a tree thought to be peculiar to the Canary Islands. It was also he who showed, by means of authentic specimens gathered on this island, that the Euphorbia Luthyris in the herbarium of Francis Masson, held in the British Museum, came from here and not from the Azores, as someone had supposed.

Many exotic plants now found in abundance in our quintas (country estates) and gardens were introduced by the subject of this entry. He grew and acclimatised them on a property in the locality (sítio) of Desterro, and then distributed them among his friends and acquaintances.

João Maria Moniz was a knight of the Order of St James, a provincial associate of the Lisbon Academy of Sciences (Academia das Ciências de Lisboa), a corresponding member of the now defunct Geographical Society of Porto (Sociedade de Geografia do Porto) and a member of the former Agricultural Society of Funchal (Sociedade Agrícola do Funchal). He promoted an exhibition held in Funchal in 1854 and was one of the members of the committee that organised the agricultural exhibition of 1861. He owned a diamond ring given to him by the Infante Dom Luís, later King of Portugal; Empress Elisabeth of Austria and Prince Maximilian, later Emperor of Mexico, also showed him great esteem when they visited this island.

On his death he left a valuable herbarium, which was acquired by the English botanist Murray and is now at Kew; a magnificent collection of land shells, which was bought by the Englishman Blandy, now deceased; and a collection of woods, which is at present in the archive of the Municipal Council (Câmara Municipal) of Funchal. In the last years of his life he was trying to gather the marine shells of Madeira in order to submit them for examination to the Englishman Watson, but death overtook him before he had finished this work.

J. M. Moniz was above all a botanist and malacologist, but he knew the great majority of the fishes of Madeiran waters and was no stranger to entomology. A small collection of insects that he had put together was given during his lifetime to the distinguished French entomologist Fauvel.

He was gifted with a prodigious memory and an admirable power of observation. For this reason he seldom failed to give the name of a plant he had once studied, even many years after that study. If he could not, like Augustin de Candolle, recognise plants by their cotyledons, he could often recognise them from a mere fragment of a leaf, as we had occasion to observe more than once.

João Maria Moniz died in Funchal on 10 July 1898. He worked until the end of his life and was unquestionably one of the most distinguished men of our land, even though he left no work to bear witness to his great learning and to the interest he always devoted to the study of the natural sciences.