This paper situates André Michaux's American career in the larger context of contemporary French botanical institutions. An extensive set of botanical gardens in metropolitan France included the Jardin du Roi (1635) in Paris and several dozen other gardens spread throughout the provinces. A complementary system of botanical gardens and horticultural stations arose outside the Metropolis in the colonies. In the 1750s, French authorities established spice cultivation in the Indian-Ocean settlements on Île de France (Mauritius) and Île Bourbon (Reunion). By the 1770s and 1780s, royal botanical gardens had spread to Cayenne, Guadeloupe, and Saint-Domingue (Haiti) in the New World. In the 1780s, the Ministry of the Navy undertook several botanical transfers from the Indian Ocean to the Americas with the aim of implanting commercial cultivations in the New World. André Michaux's expedition to North America formed part of this larger network. Had the French Revolution not intervened, the American gardens founded by André Michaux might have been further swept up in this unprecedented intercontinental system of French botanical stations.