David Lee 
identifying plants. In an age when 
travel was expensive and dangerous, 
he explored France, Switzerland, It- 
aly, Yugoslavia, Greece, and Asia Mi- 
nor, sending back to Padua many 
specimens of exotic and hitherto un- 
known plants. Many of his successors 
followed his example, notably Giovan- 
ni Veslingio, who served as director 
from 1638 to 1649. Veslingio explored 
Greece, Palestine, and Egypt and sent 
a collector to Crete who gathered 
three hundred kinds of seeds and 
plants indigenous to that island. 
Under the direction of such men, 
the plant collections in the new garden 
grew rapidly. In 1 552, just seven years 
after its foundation, the garden con- 
tained specimens of 1,500 different 
varieties of plants; by 1591, the num- 
ber had risen to 2,000. Although the 
original intention had been to collect 
only medicinal plants, the collection 
In the sixteenth century, many 
artists again ventured into the field 
to study living plants. This 
chamomile is from Otto Brunfels’s 
Contrafayt Kreuterbuch. The hand- 
colored illustrations in this botanical 
work were arranged by season, 
reflecting the natural order in which 
the artist, Hans von Weiditz, came 
upon the plants in the wild. 
soon expanded to encompass many 
plants of botanical, agricultural, and 
horticultural interest. Before long, 
Padua’s collection of exotic plants be- 
came so impressive that it attracted 
botanists from all over Europe. Many 
exotic plants were grown in Europe 
for the first time in Padua. A number 
of these plants are horticulturally im- 
portant today, among them the lilac 
( Syringa vulgaris), rhubarb ( Rheum 
rhaponticum ), and the black locust 
( Robinia pseudoacacia). And at least 
one plant introduced by the garden 
has played a vital economic role: the 
potato ( Solanum tuberosum). 
During its early years, the Padua 
botanical garden was also a leader in 
the field of botanical publications. 
While serving as its director, Squa- 
lermo wrote Semplici, in which he 
attempted to clear up the confusion 
that had existed throughout the Mid- 
dle Ages concerning the true identity 
of the plants referred to by Dioscorides 
and other ancient authorities on me- 
dicinal plants. Squalermo tried to 
match each plant described by the 
ancient authors with a plant known 
to contemporary botany, and the qual- 
ity of his scholarship was so high that 
his book was accepted as the standard 
reference on this subject in the six- 
teenth and seventeenth centuries. 
Many of the earliest botanical de- 
scriptions of exotic floras were also 
published under the aegis of the Pad- 
ua botanical garden. For example, 
De Plantis Aegypti, a study of Egyp- 
tian flora, was published by Prospero 
Alpino, director of the garden from 
1603 until 1616. This book introduced 
many new plants to European bota- 
nists, and although now obsolete, it 
served as the basis for more complete 
modern studies of this subject. In 
1591, the garden also became the first 
institution of its kind to publish a cata- 
log and map of all the plants grown 
in its garden. This kind of reference 
work is invaluable to any scientist who 
wishes to study a botanical garden’s 
plant collection, and most botanical 
gardens now regularly publish plant 
lists and maps. 
The greatest achievement of the Bo- 
tanical Garden of Padua University, 
however, was the example it set. Bo- 
tanical gardens modeled on it were 
soon founded in other cities, first in 
Italy at Pisa (1547), Florence (1554), 
and Bologna (1568), and later outside 
of Italy at Leipzig (1580), Leyden 
(1587), and Oxford (1621). Many of 
these newer research institutes were 
In the fourth century B C., the Greek 
naturalist Theophrastus made 
careful studies of living plants, 
including species native to Greece 
and exotics from Asia. Neglected for 
many centuries, he is now often 
called the father of botany. 
larger and better endowed than the 
Padua botanical garden, and by the 
end of the eighteenth century, Padua 
was no longer a leader in botanical 
research. 
Padua’s botanical garden does not 
now hold the preeminent place it once 
did, but it continues to function as 
a center for botanical research. Now 
funded by the Italian government 
rather than by the city of Venice, the 
garden has preserved its affiliation 
with the University of Padua and still 
serves as a learning resource for the 
university’s students. In addition to 
its collection of live plants, the garden 
maintains a respectable botanical li- 
brary and a large herbarium of dried 
specimens, with a particular emphasis 
on the plants of the Veneto, the region 
surrounding Venice. 
The garden is by no means a mu- 
seum, but a special effort has been 
made to preserve its ties with the past. 
It still occupies the same five acres 
leased, and later purchased, from the 
monastery of Santa Giustina, and a 
stroll around the grounds with a copy 
of Giovanni Moroni’s plan in hand 
reveals that the garden’s basic design 
has changed little since 1545. The 
plant collections have grown and some 
modern equipment has been installed, 
but the collections are still planted 
in beds subdivided in the original geo- 
metric patterns. Many of the plant 
species listed in the catalog of 1591 
are still being grown, although in most 
cases the names have changed. 
Throughout the garden, magnifi- 
cent old plants bear witness to the 
garden’s antiquity. The most notable 
is a dwarf palm ( Chamaerops humilis) 
that was planted in 1585 and was the 
basis for the first botanical description 
of this genus in 1720. There are also 
several enormous old shade trees, 
some several centuries old. In this set- 
ting, which abounds with evidence of 
a long, rich history, the debt botany 
owes to this garden and to the modest 
beginning made there in June of 1545 
becomes strikingly clear. □ 
56 
