A tree. The sea. A shore. Even the green spaces of a city: they all are ecosystems. So, take a big breath my friends and deep dive with me into the world of nature. Barbara Baldan, a professor of the University of Padua and keeper of the Botanical garden of Padua, showed me the ropes of this magical place: the oldest garden in the world.
I traveled among biomes, from the Equatorial jungle, to the dry desert, till the far Antarctic land. I discovered medicinal plants and touched the Goethe’s palm, a piece from 1585.
The insight for the theory on modification of shape
My journey started exactly from the oldest plant of the Garden, a palm scientifically identified as a chamaerops humilis. The eyes of this piece have almost seen over 500 years of mankind’s history and it’s still here, stronger than ever, with its trunks that run 10 meters high.
Located in the Hortus sphaericus (from latin: spherical garden) since 1585, in the section of medicinal plants, this palm is preserved in a vertical greenhouse.
Chamaerops humilis is very common around the Mediterranean area and is the only palm species which naturally grows in Europe. It had become popular for the easy-to-work leaves to make brooms, ropes and paddings. Its sprouts are comestible and edible after being baked, moreover you can make flour from its roots. This culinary tradition goes back till the time of Cicero who wrote about it before wheat had been discovered.
In 1786, the German intellectual, philosopher and scientist Johann Wolfgang (von) Goethe met this amazing “creature”. Actually, this palm is always moving, changing its shape. Of course, it can’t walk, but it transforms itself like a man changes from the youth to the elderly.
Goethe noticed its leaves sprout up as a whole and, during years, they slowly open like a fan. This intuition allowed him to give birth to his theory about metamorphosis of plants published in 1790.
«All is leaf» he wrote. He sought to find a unifying feature that all plants shared throughout their development and, in so doing, came to the conclusion that all plant structures were merely a variation on a theme: the leaf.
Since that time, this plant passed into history with the name of Goethe’s palm.
Before medicine: how men healed themselves
The area where Goethe’s palm is conserved, recalls the original purpose of the Garden: growing plants able to heal people. So, in this piece of land, there are about 600 species of medicinal plants that visitors can discover and learn their use by specific labels.
In the 16th century, uncertainty and lack of education about the plants used for medical therapies ruled, making mistakes and frauds a daily occurrence. So, a medicinal herbs garden to teach Paduan students about the real medicinal plants was founded. At the beginning, the Botanical garden of Padua counted more than 1800 medicinal plants species.
A hi-tech green house: the solar active building
Walking through a narrow white gravel trail, in between two walls covered by hederas, you’ll reach a wide green area where the main Garden's greenhouse is located.
Now breathe and take two minutes to admire the great view of the Abbey of Santa Giustina, a Benedictine abbey in the center of Padua, facing Prato della Valle, which dates from the 10th century.
On the left side of the area, there is the huge greenhouse, 100 meters in length and 18 in height.
This building is internationally awarded for two main reasons:
The greenhouse is environment-friendly built by reducing as much as possible its carbon footprint. Actually, it works with solar power and water necessary for plants is recycled by using a 450 cubic meters tank which gathers rain. A computing system automates all the greenhouse’s functions, making it completely independent and electronically secured. Another amazing feature is given by the opaque surfaces that are covered by a photocatalytic material which exploits UV rays to make a chemical reaction. This effect considerably reduces the atmospheric pollution;
The second characteristic which makes this place unique is the ideal travel visitors start once they enter the greenhouse. Actually, this building is split in belts conserving plants of different biomes, so that visitors walk from the Equatorial area to the Poles. You can discover the typical environment and plants which live in a tropical rainforest, humid subtropical forest, Mediterranean and temperate climate, and arid climate. Along the greenhouse’s walls, there are interactive stations which teach visitors the development of the relationship between men and plants.
This path into nature is full of surprises. The different biomes have their own life and plants grow, bloom and die like in the real world. Everything moves, changes, cocoa plant give birth to its orange fruits while a bunch of bananas appears upon a banana tree. And so everything follows the life cycle as well as the seasons. Time passes by, and the miracle of life takes its course.
Ancient roots survived arduous battles
The professor Barbara Baldan also showed me two other precious and old plants. The first one is the second oldest plant after Goethe’s palm: an oriental plane tree (platanus orientalis).
The specimen preserved here has a thick trunk, 40 meters high, and a dense wide crown. It was placed in 1680 and it’s characterized by a huge internal cavity, probably caused by lightning. This is not the only adversity this tree has had to face.
In fact, it was attacked by a parasitic fungus called Armillaria. This fungus can quickly advance inside roots which hold up a tree and seriously damage its stability. So, gardeners of the second half of 1900, helped the tree to face and defeat this arduous enemy.
The second giant ancient tree comes from inner China and represents the oldest example in history of plant with seeds. It is a ginkgo biloba, very popular in China and Japan, because of the belief it protects from evil spirits. That’s why it’s usually planted in temples.
Its name comes from Japanese and means silver apricot (gin: silver; kyo: apricot), exactly because its seeds seem like a silver apricot once matured.
The peculiarity of this specimen, added to the Garden in 1750, is that it has a female branch grafted for educational proposes. So, it makes female and male flowers and fruits. In nature, ginkgo biloba is a dioecious species (with split genders, otherwise with male and female seeds present in different plants).
Nowadays, ginkgo biloba is studied in medicine for containing important substances in its leaves which help to prevent and heal many types of circulatory diseases.
The Garden as an UNESCO world heritage site
The Botanical garden of Padua is the center of a dense international network of relations based on research and exchange of ideas, knowledge, plants and scientific material.
In 1997, it was added to the World Heritage List, because «the Botanical garden of Padua is the starting source for all the other botanical gardens in the world and represents a cradle of science, scientific exchanges and comprehension of relations between nature and culture. It has largely contributed to develop many modern scientific disciplines, such as botany, medicine, chemistry, ecology and pharmaceutics».
The area where the Garden is located, was chosen for three reasons:
It was very close to Padua’s walls and out of the center city;
The piece of land was already worked by Santa Giustina abbey’s monks who grew medicinal plants in horti conclusi (from latin: enclosed gardens);
The area is surrounded for its 2/3 by Alicorno canal. So, there is a natural presence of water, fundamental for growing plants.
In 1545, University of Padua finally bought the land from Santa Giustina’s monks, borrowing money from the Republic of Venice that helped to realized this ambitious project.
During years, the Garden was surrounded by houses, so it lost its capability to enlarge the boundaries.
WHEN YOU DRINK A CUP OF COFFEE, YOU SHOULD THINK OF THE BOTANICAL GARDEN OF PADUA
Coffea arabica and its first discovery
The plant of coffee was described for the first time in Italy by the director of the Garden, Dr. Prospero Alpini, in 1592.
He was the medic of the Italian ambassador in Cairo (Egypt) and, guided by his botanical passion, he scrupulously described the Egyptian flora.
There, he discovered that the population used to make a drink from the toasted seeds of coffea arabica, a plant now known as a coffee plant.
After his many travels to Africa, he wrote a book, De plantis Aegypti, where he discusses the therapeutic uses of this drink.
The Republic of Venice exported coffee around the world and it quickly became a common good in Occidental countries. It arrived in Brazil only in 1727, a nation which is now represented as the major coffee manufacturer.
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