Sebastián Vidal y Soler

Sebastián Vidal
Statue of Vidal in Manila
Born(1842-04-01)1 April 1842
Barcelona, Spain
Died28 July 1889(1889-07-28) (aged 47)
Manila, Captaincy General of the Philippines
Scientific career
FieldsBotany, Forestry
Academic advisors
Máximo Laguna
S.Vidal

Sebastián Vidal y Soler (Barcelona, April 1, 1842 – Manila, July 28, 1889) was a Spanish forester and botanist.

The standard author abbreviation S.Vidal is used to indicate this person as the author when citing a botanical name.

Sebastián was born in Barcelona to Domènec Vidal i Balaguer and Peronella Soler i Rovirosa. He and his lesser-known older brother, Domingo, studied at the Spanish forestry school. Sebastián also studied in Germany at the Royal Saxon Academy of Forestry after which he returned to the Spanish forestry school to teach botany.

Career in the Philippines

In the 1860s Spain had set up a forestry service in the Philippines and in the 1870s Sebastián and his brother applied to work there. As a forester, Sebastián had a particular interest in woody plants, but he studied Malesian flora in general, collecting specimens, collaborating with other botanists, and publishing a number of works including Revisión de Plantas Vasculares Filipinas (Manila 1886).

He was able to make several trips back to Europe and also visited the USA. His 1874 publication Memoria sobre el ramo de montes en las islas Filipinas refers to his being in Spain, apparently for health reasons. In 1876 he attended the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in order to promote the products of the Philippines. In 1883 he took sick leave because of asthma and visited European herbaria including that of Kew. In 1887 a Philippines Exposition was organised in Madrid. There was a section devoted to Geografía botánica del Archipiélago, su flora, la forestal y fauna ('Botanical geography of the Archipelago, its flora, forest and fauna'). Vidal brought live plants to be exhibited at the newly constructed Palacio de Cristal in the Retiro Park.

Palacio de Cristal

Vidal served as director of the Botanical Garden of Manila (now Mehan garden) from 1878 until his death in 1889 from cholera. A statue of Vidal by Enric Clarasó was erected in the Garden. It survived the end of Spanish rule in Manila, but it no longer exists.

Honours

In 1875 Vidal was awarded the Order of the Crown by Prussia for translating two books about the Philippines from German into Spanish. One of the works was Reisen in den Philippinen by Fedor Jagor.

For his contribution to the Philippines Exposition, Vidal received the honour of entry into the Order of Isabella the Catholic.

Plant specimens

The herbarium in Manila was destroyed in a fire in 1897, but some of Vidal's specimens of Philippine flora are preserved in Europe to this day, at Kew, where he collaborated with Robert Allen Rolfe, and at Madrid's Real Jardín Botánico, where since Vidal's death Benjamín Máximo Laguna and later scholars have worked on them.

References

  1. ↑ Obituary: Señor Don Sebastian Vidal, Popular Science Monthly
  2. ↑ International Plant Names Index. S.Vidal.
  3. ↑ "Vidal y Soler, Sebastian". Cyclopedia of Malesian Collectors. Nationaal Herbarium Nederland. Retrieved July 15, 2012.
  4. ↑ Memoria sobre el ramo de montes en las Islas Filipinas ... Aribau y C.a. 454 pp. Reprint BiblioBazaar, 2010. 472 pp. ISBN 1147782954
  5. ↑ García López, Javier (2025). Una estatua en Manila [A statue in Manila] (PDF) (in Spanish).
  6. ↑ Vidal's publications include one based on Hugh Cuming's specimens held in London. Sebastián Vidal y Soler (1885). Phanerogamae Cumingianae Philippinarum: ó, Índice numèrico y catálogo sistemático de las plantas fanerogamas coleccionadas en Filipinas. M. Pérez Hijo. 217 pp.
  7. 1 2 3 Blanco Fernández de Caleya, Paloma (1995). "Los herbarios de las expediciones científicas españolas al nuevo mundo". Asclepio. 47 (2): 185. doi:10.3989/asclepio.1995.v47.i2.443. Archived from the original on 2011-09-08. Retrieved 2013-03-26.
  8. ↑ "Letter from Sebastián Vidal y Soler to Daniel Oliver; from Manila, Philippines; 20 Jan 1886". JSTOR Global Plants. Retrieved 31 October 2026.
  9. ↑ Graciele M. Calabrese, Mauricio Velayos, Type specimens in the Vidal Herbarium at the Real Jardín Botánico, Madrid, Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society, Volume 159, Issue 2, February 2009, Pages 292–299, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1095-8339.2008.00829.x
  10. ↑ "Vidal Herbarium". Real Jardín Botánico. Retrieved July 20, 2012.