Royal Botanical Expedition to New Spain

The Royal Botanical Expedition to New Spain (Spanish: Expedición Botánica al Virreinato de Nueva España) was a scientific expedition to survey the flora and fauna of the territories of New Spain between 1787 and 1803 and to establish a botanical garden. It was sponsored by King Charles III of Spain and headed by physician Martín Sessé y Lacasta, who led a team of botanists that included José Mariano Mociño and is part of the crown's general program of economic revitalization, known as the Bourbon Reforms. The expedition, commonly referred to by botanists as the Sessé and Mociño expedition, identified many species new to science and brought back a large trove of valuable botanical illustrations.

Martín Sessé, a Spanish physician employed by the Royal Botanical Garden of Madrid who was established in Mexico, conceived of the expedition. He wrote to the Spanish botanist Casimiro Gómez Ortega suggesting a botanical expedition that would serve two purposes: first to classify the natural resources of the Viceroyalty of New Spain, and second to implement new health-related procedures in the colonial territories.

Coincidentally, around the same time, cosmographer Juan Bautista Muñoz found in the library of the Colegio Imperial de Madrid parts of the original manuscripts from an earlier botanical expedition, the Francisco Hernández Expedition of 1570–1577. Gómez Ortega was then charged with updating and publishing those manuscripts, and this combination of circumstances seems to have convinced the king to support a new expedition. On March 20, 1787, he issued a royal decree authorizing the expedition and providing the funds needed.

Preparation for the expedition began in 1787 with a series of trips by Sessé to Santo Domingo, Puerto Rico, and Cuba, where earlier expeditions had taken place, in order to gather information from the experiences of other scientific teams. He also collaborated on some of the studies being carried out in those places, such as research in Cuba on treatment of a parasitic illness.

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