From the early
medieval period the crucial centre of Northern Italy’s wealth was the
independent Republic of Venice.
As Europe´s most
important trading hub, Venice dominated the critical trade routes to the East
for hundreds of years.
Ships brought back
fabulously valuable silks, gold an spices, and from the early 16th
century, goods and treasures also began to come in from the Americas.
Merchants and sailors
returned with unfamiliar plants and fruits from as far away as China and Chile.
Including wildly
exotic plants, such the potato and the tomato.
(Grazie, - Prego. –
Grazie.)
It seems
extraordinary to us now. When we take tomatoes for granted, but when they came
in, they were regarded as this extraordinary plant which had these slightly
suspicious-looking fruits which no-one dreamed of eating. They assumed they
were poisonous. It was ages before someone plucked up the courage and popped
them in their mouth. And, of course, now, everywhere in Italy lives off
tomatoes.
I am in Padua, 50
kilometres inland from Venice, in the
wealthy hinterland of the Venetian republic, knowh as the Veneto.
Venice has always
been the dominant city of the region, but the most significant garden was mede
here in Padua.
The Orto Botanico,
made in 1543 as part of Padua University, is thought to be the world´s oldest
botanical garden. Initially, it was set up to study and collect “simples”,
which is the description which was then given to medicinal plants.
The original garden
lies behind this beautiful circular wall. But when it was first laid out, the
wall wasn´t there. And people very quickly cottoned on to the fact that these
plants that they were laying in the beds, were potentially enormously valuable.
They were medicinal plants, so if a cure could be found, somebody was going to
get very rich indeed. So people came in and then nicked them and flogged them
at great profit. So they put up the wall, so, what you´ve got to see is,
actually, it´s a fortrees and the purpose of the wal is to keep people out.
At the same time that
art and architecture were being transformed in Renaissance Florence, scientist
were laying the foundations of modern botany in Padua. The Orto Botanico was
dedicated to studying the properties of newly-introduced as wll as indigenous
plants, so that they could be used safely and effectively. This was
revolutionary, because up to that point, plant-based remedies had largely
relied on superstition and folklore.
Most medicine was
based on the doctrine of signatories which basically meant that if a plant
looked like an aspect of the human body, then it would cure it. So, for
example, a walnut – it looks like a brain, so it was used to try an cure
diseases of the brain, or Pulmonaria, lungwort that we grow, was used for lung
diseases. In practice, that killed as many people as it cured.
The whole point of
the Renaissance was to explored and discover and apply the mind to science. So
by 1533, when the Chair of Botany was set up here in Padua, they wanted to
collect as many plants as possible, not just say, “It looks as thougt it will
do this”, but to find out.
The head of the Orto
Botanico, Professor Francesco Bonafede, realized that the first step towards
understanding medicinal plants was to identify and classify each specimen
accurately. You know, it´s really strange, because this is fundamentally a
filing system.
It´s a laboratory,
and there is no attempt to make a beautiful garden, the important thing is the
order and the seguence and the display of plants so they can be studied. And yet,
there´s a magic here, there´s a real charm. You walk in and you´re seduced, it
feels wonderful, it´s the most beautiful garden. I know I´m biased, of course. Of
course I´m bound to love it, but I defy anybody not to feel that magic.
As new plants came in,
they were given a specific position in an elaborate network of borders. To
learn how it works, I met the former perfect, Professor Elsa Cappalletti.
- This book was the first exercise book for
students, it was a pocket book, in
whitch there was the plan of the garden.
- So
this is the plan of the garden here. With the four squares.
- Yes.
- In the past, students had to identify plants
only observing their shape, the flowers and so on.
- And then they had to write the correct name of
the plant.
- Oh, I see. The identity.
- Perhaps there was a bella donna. Ok. And they
had to write, “bella dona”.
- So if they which bed the plant was in, then
they would know wichh plant it was? Yes, yes.
- So the pattern was, if you like, an aide to
memory as much as anything else?
- Yes, yes.
It may be a simple
system compared to our electronic wizardry, but actually, it´s beautifully
effective because you can see how, if a student who had studied here, came
across a plant in the field, perhaps on the other side of the world, wasn´t
quite sure what it was, but they vaguely remembered it, all they had to do was
think back to where they´d seen it in this garden, whitch particular bed. And
because each bed only had one plant, they´d hone in on that, look up in their
book, bed number 36, block number two – bingo, they´ve got the name.
The 16th
century saw an increasing flow of new arrivals. The very first foreing plant
introduced into the garden was in 1561, and was the Agave from Mexico, where it
was prized by the Mayans for its wound-healing properties.
The oldest surviving
plant in the garden is the Mediterranean fan palm, Camaerops humilis. This is
the original specimen, that has been growing here since 1585.
It´s hard to
exaggerate the importance of this garden. There were other botanic gardens
around the same time, the one in Pisa was just about the same period, but this
was where the study of plants really took on importance.
And that appreciation
of plants first of all as an aide to medicine and then as an end in itself, was
slowly, but inexorably shaping the way that we viewed our gardens.
As
well as studying medical plants, the botanical garden in Padua played an
important role in testing out the cultivation of newly introduced agricultural
species that were to prove essencial to feed the growing population.
