ONE MORNING AT THE BOTANICAL GARDEN OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PADUA

The students from 4A promote Plant Biology, Art and History

THE OLDEST BOTANICAL GARDEN IN THE WORLD

Arianna De Luca:

The Botanical Garden of the University of Padua was founded in 1545. It is the oldest garden in theworld, which is still in its original location. It includes more than 7,000 species of plants.

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A SQUARE INSIDE A CIRCLE

Lorenzo Sancassani:

The design is an extraordinary example of balance and harmonious geometrical composition,inspired to the Renaissance.

HORTUS SIMPLICIUM

Teresa Calazavara:

The Garden (22,000 square meters) was founded on deliberation of the Senate of the VenetianRepublic, which needed plant specialists for its trades. Medicinal plants, the so-called "simpleplants" produced natural remedies. Attending the Garden of the University students learned todistinguish the genuine medicinal plants from the wrong or poisonous ones.

The cultivation of “medicinal” plants continued over the centuries. Some are still used in medicinebecause they have therapeutic properties but others were used in the past but are no longertherapeutically valid today.

Over the years, the Botanical Garden was steadily enriched with plants from all over the world,particularly from the countries that participated in trade with Venice. Consequently, Padua had a

leading role in the introduction and study of many exotic plants. A herbarium, a library and manylaboratories were gradually added to its Botanical Garden.

HORTUS CINCTUS

Luca Gasparinetti:

There are no documents proving the paternity of the project, even though there is evidence of theinvolvement in the works of architect Andrea Moroni from Bergamo, who also designed the oldcourtyard of Palazzo Bo. A few years after the founding, in 1552, a circular wall of fence was built,to prevent the continuous nocturnal thefts of valuable medicinal plants.

At the beginning of the eighteenth century four monumental doorways were built, the flowerbedswere altered, the fountains in the centre of each quarter were added, at the intersection of the twomain paths.In later times, Hortus Cinctus was expanded to occupy the area outside the circular wall, whereother fountains were created: the Fountain of Theophrastus, a Greek medical doctor of the IIIcentury BC, considered the Father of Botany (South gate), and one called the Four Seasons (Eastgate) represented by four eighteenth-century marble busts depicting the allegories of the FourSeasons. A statue of Solomon by the Paduan sculptor Antonio Bonazza is also seen there. The earlygreenhouses were also made of masonry; one of these nineteenth-century greenhouses still has theoriginal interior structure with elegant arches and cast iron columns.

On the ledge of the "botanical theatre" the busts of eminent scholars were placed: in the middle youcan see the bust of Francesco Bonafede, the scholar promoting Plant Biology and Medicine, alongwith those of Joseph Pitton de Tournefort, Karl Linnaeus, Antonio Bernardo de Jussieu andMarcello Malpighi. The large building near the entrance, which dates back to the seventeenth andeighteenth centuries, was once intended to house of the Prefect of the Botanical Garden.

PHILOSOPHY

Tommaso Turchetto:

Mrs. Padovani, our Chemistry and Biology teacher, suggested we should read Verde Brillante byStefano Mancuso and Alessandro Viola, an interesting approach to the “Green world” consideringplants as living beings.

From the beginning even philosophers discussed about this issue, from Aristotle, who treated plantslike objects, to Democritus, who treated them in a different and modern way.

Karl Linnaeus, however, was the first scientist (he lived during the 18 th century) who focused ontheir reproductive systems and tried to catalog them like real living beings for the first time inhistory!

HOT SPRING WATER FROM THE HILLS

Massimiliano Boccato:

The design of Garden is commonly attributed to Andrea Moroni, who created some of the mostimportant public monuments in Padua, such as the Basilica of Santa Giustina in Prato della Valle.The Town Hall and the university were built in the first half of the 16 th century. However, the realarchitect was Daniele Barbaro, a Venetian nobleman who was a man of vast learning and translatorof Vitruvius De Architectura. By the end of the 16th century the garden was enriched with fountainsfed by a gigantic hydrophore wheel to ensure proper irrigation. During the first half of the 18 th

century the wall was refined along the external perimeter by a balustrade made of Istria stone. In the

garden there are also three sundials: a cubic one, a circular one and a cylindrical one. A pool ofwater for the aquatic plants is fed by a continuous jet of warm water, which comes from a water-bearing stratum of earth located 300 meters below the level of the garden. The warm water comesfrom Padua hillside (Euganean Hills)

“Nymphaea” is a genus of hard, waterproof, aquatic plants in theNymphaeaceae family.

THE PREFECT

Benedetta Bibiani:

The building that hosted the Prefect (garden manager) was builtbefore the garden itself.

Nowadays the Prefect is Ms Barbara Baldan, the second womansince foundation. At the beginning, the balustrade, the receptionand the gates were missing. They were built later because lots ofplants were stolen during the early years. I liked both the old partand the new one in the same way.

UNESCO WORLD HERITAGE

Alesia Greku:

In 1997 the botanical garden of Padua was included in the World Heritage List of UNESCObecause “it is the original of all botanical gardens throughout the world, and represents the birth ofscience, of scientific exchanges, and understanding of the relationship between nature and culture.It has made a profound contribution to the development of many modern scientific disciplines,notably botany, medicine, chemistry, ecology and pharmacy.”

The pattern of the square inside a circle refers to a medieval “Hortus Conclusus”, a heavenly place.

THE NEW AREA

Arianna De Luca:

On May 2002, the adjacent Jesuit College Antonianum sold most of its land to the Botanical Gardenand in 2008 began the works to extend the facility. The new area is characterized by majortechnological innovations: the main change concerns the construction of four greenhouses thatreproduce various terrestrial ecosystems, from tropical to arid.

In the Garden of biodiversity there are more than 1,300 species of plants. The building is made fromglass except for the roof, which is made with cushions of ethylene tetrafluoroethylene, a resistantplastic more transparent than glass to UV rays, which are vital for the plants. The facility was builtto exploit to the full the natural energy from the sun and natural precipitations are collected in a bigpool and then the water is used to feed the plants.

The plants are arranged into several zones: America, Africa, Asia, Oceania and Europe, in that waythe visitor can see that different plants grow in different zones of the world because of the differentclimate zones.

BIOMES

Davide Damiani:

Just outside the Botanical Garden there is a new greenhouse that takes the visitor on an imaginaryjourney from the Equator to the Poles, in fact it contains four different environments: the Tropicalrain forest, the Sub-humid tropical forest and Savannah, the Temperate and Mediterranean climateand the Arid climate. Each climate/forest has their typical plants and trees.

At present, the oldest plant is a Palm tree planted in 1585 called "Goethe’s Palm Tree”, because thepoet referred to it in his essay "Geschichte meines botanisches Studiums"; this tree is situated in agreenhouse inside the Hortus Sphaericus, where there is also a Ginkgo and a Magnolia dating backto the mid-18th century, which are regarded as the oldest specimina in Europe.

THE GUIDED TOUR

Martina Mognato:

The first plant we saw was an Oriental Plane dated 1680. It is recognizable by its hollow trunkprobably caused by a lightning strike.

The second was a Ginkgo Biloba dated 1750, an old male specimen grafted with a female branch inthe mid – 1850’s.

The“Ginkgo Biloba” is a male specimen dating back to 1750.This tree from the Garden has a female branch that was grafted for educational purposes; the guidetold us that the fruits of a female Ginkgo Biloba stink.

GINGKO, A LIVING FOSSIL

Lorenzo Sancassani:

The guide explained that now the site is also used for the preservation of many rare and endangeredspecies. We saw majestic trees like a Plane tree or a Gingko Biloba, imported in 1750. The Gingkois considered a living fossil, since it has been surviving identical for 250 million years and thisspecimen in particular is special because it is a male plant that was grafted with a branch of afemale one, so it can reproduce independently. The Plane Tree, which has been growing in thatgarden since 1680, shows a unique feature: in spite of its hollow trunk, it is still living, becauseonly the exterior of the trunk is needed to carry the sap to the plant.

At the entrance we saw an ancient hollow Oriental Plane tree and a lovely Camellia plant.

The “Camellia plant” is a genus of flowering plants in the Theaceae family.

Everybody was enchanted by the pink flowers of this plant and by the pink petals that had fallen tothe ground.

Elisabetta Binetti:

We entered the most interesting area of the garden from the North gate. It is the most beautiful partto me because of its peculiar shape: a circle, which represents the Universe, inside which there is asquare, the symbol of Earth. Plants are divided by category (medicinal plants, rare Triveneto plantsetc.) in beds organized in geometric shapes. However, there are also some old trees such asGoethe’s Palm, a very tall palm tree protected by a glass structure. It is so called because it inspiredGoethe to write his theory on natural metamorphosis.

Oriental Plane

Camellia plant

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Goethe's Palm Tree

Benedetta Bibiani: I was really impressed by the old Palm tree, which is more than 10 meters high.

BIODIVERSITY

Alessandra Gasparini:

At the end of the tour Lorenzo, our guide, took us into the biodiversity garden

The Garden of Biodiversity opened in October 2014, it is one of the most advanced greenhouses inthe world in this field.

Within this new , futuristic , facility more than 1,300 species of plants are grown

They are divided into four macro environments:

1. Tropical rainforest;

2. sub humid tropical forest;

3. temperate and Mediterranean climate;

4. arid climate.

PHYTOGEOGRAPHY

Teresa Calzavara:

The species in the biodiversity garden live in environments sharing the same humidity andtemperature characteristics, simulating the climate condition of the planet’s biomes, from tropical to

sub-humid, temperate and arid zones. The position of the plants in each environment and of theaquatic plant pool reflects a phytogeographic division. To discover the plants and theirenvironments is a sort of voyage through the Earth’s flora.

Massimiliano Boccato:

The Garden’s new greenhouses, which run on solar and water power, take the visitor on a journeythrough the Earth’s climate zones. We saw a lot of plants that come from all continents, in fact,when we entered the greenhouse, we saw South American plants that live in a very humid place, forexample the plant of “Cocoa”: this plant was considered medicinal, but in 1886 Mr John SmithPemberton added some sugar to the preparation inventing one of the best drinks of history: CocaCola. At the bottom of the greenhouse, we saw the desert’s plant for example the plant of tequila orcacti that live in a very dry place.

THE CONSERVATION OF SEEDS

Luca Gasparinetti:

Initially I was impressed by the majesty and the peculiarity of the Oriental Plane tree and later byGoethe’s Palm tree but my main interest was the safeguard of biodiversity of more than 7,000species of plants.

A very important feature of the present times is deforestation due to human arrogance as well asignorance about the exploitation of nature. Today the Garden houses museum exhibitions (groundfloor); on the first floor there is the historic library, the archive of the Botanical Garden andHerbarium, while the second floor houses the management and other premises for the storage ofseeds. The conservation of seeds is crucial to avoid the disappearing from the face of the earth ofendangered plants. To this purpose a University Centre was built with the purpose of protection,conservation, enhancement and transmission to future generations of the World Cultural Heritage ofthe Botanical Garden. Besides preserving local, rare or endangered plant species, the BotanicalGarden is engaged to maintain biodiversity; encourage research and experimentation; promoteexperimental teaching. In addition to the preservation of seeds and growing plants the BotanicalGarden of Padua is also a responsible and foremost to scientific research. In his nearly fivecenturies of activity, the Garden has witnessed the evolution of the science of botany applied tomedicine as well as theoretical science, which has gradually been differentiating and articulating innumerous current specialized branches. During this century-long evolution, it has alwaysmaintained a high standard of scientific and educational activities, constantly adapting its livingcollections to the changing needs imposed by the progress of botanical disciplines.