Garden of simple of Florence

The garden of simple the of Florence is a department of the Museum of natural history of the Université of Florence. It is located at the 3 via Micheli with Florence in Toscane.

“ a public place, where… one would cultivate the native plants of climates and the most various countries, so that the young students can, in the same place, with facility and speed, to learn how to recognize them. ”

Luca Ghini, 1543 (quotation engraved on the 460 years the medal commemorative of the foundation of the garden of simple)

Historic insight

Since the the Middle Ages, the simple ones - plant varieties with the medicinal virtues - are cultivated in urban gardens. At the 16th century, the intensifying interest for the study of the natural world, the duke Cosme I {{er}} of Médicis wanted an academic garden to supplement the lessons of the students of the medical college. The official date of the foundation of the garden can be fixed at December 1st 1545, date of the leasing agreement concluded with the Dominican sisters who yielded a ground located in the locality of Cafaggio, close to the cattle sheds of Médicis, of which it took the name. The Florentin garden can be regarded as the third in the world by its seniority, after the Botanical garden of Pisa and that of Padoue. It was drawn by Niccolò Tribolo and the choice of the plants and their arrangement is due to Luca Ghini. The garden knew one period of splendor towards the end of the century under the direction of Giuseppe Casabona, which could enrich it by many rare plants. During the 17th century, the activity of Paolo Boccone and other botanists and gardeners gave to the garden a certain autonomy, although the Botanical garden of Santa Maria Nuova and that of Pisa played a scientific part more important good.

It is the large botanist Pier Antonio Micheli who, at the beginning of the 18th century, made garden a research and studies center of botanies of international importance, thanks to the relations which it maintained with many foreign scientists. Moreover, it dealt much the collection of seeds and dried samples. With died of Micheli, in 1737, it is Giovanni Targioni Tozzetti which succeeded to him, followed Saverio Manetti, author of the first Index seminum . Passed with the Accademia dei Georgofili in 1783, after the removal of the botanical Company, the garden was transformed into “experimental garden agrarian” and refitted radically by the abbot Leonardo Frati. Become again “garden of simple” in 1847, under the direction of Antonio Targioni Tozzetti, it was opened to the public in 1864. The botanist Teodoro Caruel, director of 1865 with 1895, made build the Serre S which exist still today. Towards the end of the century, it passed to the Regio Istituto di Studi Superiori , become university faculty thereafter, joining together the botanical part of the museum of natural history of via Romana and the collections of the Jardin of Boboli.

Structure and collections

The garden has a surface of 2,3 hectares, of which 1.694 m ² are occupied by greenhouses. The drawing of the plant-bands points out as well the model of the medieval Hortus conclusus dedicated to the culture of medicinal and aromatic herbs that the diagram of the secret garden of the villa of the Rebirth.

The principal building, which occupies all the side along via Micheli, shelters the offices, the library, a laboratory and the greenhouses. The building, built on a rectangular level has two wings consisted the greenhouses, the central part sheltering the organisatives structures. Five other greenhouses, out of glass and metal, are located in the garden. They are cold greenhouses or heats which lodge collections of Fougère S, plants épiphytes, Bégonia S, Broméliacée S.

Central building, one reaches the terrace, glaze of two iron pergolas supporting of climbing rose trees, which, via a gray stone staircase of Florence ( will pietra serena ), one goes down to the garden; the staircase is flanked of two bushes of Feijoa sellowiana and Stranvesia , cut in geometrical forms. All the alleys are paved rollers while the plat bands are delimited by stone flush kerbs. The benches and the tables of the hillock are also out of stone, but the decorations are out of iron.

In a niche of the wall facing the entry of via Pira, is a marble bust of Esculape. Its author is the sculptor Antonio Gino Lorenzi de Settignano (second half of the 16th century). In the center of the garden is a stone fountain, with a central jet representing a putto . The basin is approximately four meters in diameter and accommodates watery plants and red fish.

In addition to the central fountain, whose role is primarily decorative, there are many basins: on the right of the entry is a populated cement basin of water lilies, and four other basins located in the hillock lodge watery collections of plants.

One reaches the large greenhouses starting from the garden. Inside are a small basin and four wet rocks with seedlings of Philodendron and various hygrophile plants, of which the Cheveux-de-Vénus .

Pre of the Coniferous S

Vast zone of meadow, partly in plain and partly light inclined, in which remarkable conifers by their dimensions and their age are, and of the bulbous plants with spring flowering.

Plat band of the Arécacee S

It is a plat band dedicated to the acclimatization in the open air of various species of Palmier S.

Plat band of the food plants and the officinal plants

Zone dedicated to the crop plants for the human consumption and to the medicinal plants spontaneous and naturalized in Tuscany.

Plat band of the garden to Italian

It accommodates a small floor delimited by boxwood Buxus sempervirens , realized symbolically to recall the old tradition of the Jardin to Italian the.

Zone of the lake

A small water level bordered of Ivy point of disjunction of the seedlings of lotus ( Nelumbo will nucifera ); in the same sector one built a rubble which reconstitutes the medium of the the Alps apuanes and a rubble in Serpentine to shelter the endemic flora of these mediums.

Species present

The vegetable inheritance of the garden currently consists of approximately 9.000 specimens of plants.

In the pre one of conifers, it is advisable to announce Taxodium distichum and a Metasequoia glyptostroboides . Among the oldest plants, a cork oak ( Quercus suber ) planted in 1805 by Ottaviano Targioni Tozzetti, director of the time, and a yew ( Taxus baccata ) planted in 1720 by Pier Antonio Micheli. There is also a secular Zelkova serrata .

In the greenhouses abound the exotic plants (the Caféier, the Arbre of the travellers, the Amorphophallus titanus which flowered exceptionnellemt in 2002, the Bananier, etc), and the collections of Orchidée S, plants carnivores, Cactée S, Cycas, Agrume S, and others still.

List partial of the species of trees present in the external plat bands:

Acer negundo , Aesculus hippocastanum , Alnus cordata , Araucaria imbricata , Arbutus ×andrachinoides , Calocedrus decurrens , Cedrus atlantica , Cedrus deodara , Cedrus libani , Celtis occidentalis , Cupressus funebris , Cupressus goveniana , Cupressus sempervirens , Cupressus torulosa , Cycas revoluta , Diospyros lotus , Erithea armata , Fagus sylvatica , Fagus sylvatica pendula , Fraxinus excelsior , Gingko biloba , Juglans nigra , Lagerstroemia indica , Liriodendron tulipifera , Magnolia will grandiflora , Metasequoia glyptostroboides , Ostrya carpinifolia , Pinus halepensis sbsp brutia , Pinus nigra sbsp laricio , Pinus wallichiana , Pistacia chinensis Pistacia terebinthus , latanus spp. , Pterocarya stenoptera Quercus cerris , Quercus ilex , Quercus lusitanica , Quercus macrolepsis , Quercus robur , Quercus suber , Sequoia sempervirens , Sophora japonica , Taxodium distichum , Taxodium mucronatum , Taxus baccata ♂ , Taxus baccata hiberica ♀ , Tilia platiphyllos , Torreya californica , Torreya nucifera , Torreya nucifera , Washingtonia filifera , Yucca will filifera , Zelkova carpinifolia , Zelkova crenata , Zelkova serrata

Practical informations

The entry is in via Micheli 3. Telephone: 055 2756209/2756304

Schedules:

Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, Sunday: 9:00 with 13:00. Saturday: 9:00 - 17:00. Closed Wednesday.

Days of closing: January 1st, Easter, May 1st, August 15th, December 25th. Paying entry.

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