Orto Botanico

In Catania, at n°19, via Antonino Longo, it is possible to visit two museum of particular scientific value: the herbarium seated in a neoclassical style building and the Botanical Gardens, extending over a surface of approximately 16,000 sq. m. The main entrance used to previously open onto the Via Etnea at n°397 ( near piazza Cavour). The istitution of these museums goes back to the mid-nineteenth century, when the University upon the inititive of the Benedectine monk Francesco Tornabene, ( professor of Botany) bought the greater part of the land hosting the garden today, entrusting the architectural setting to Mario Di Stefano. Inside the neoclassical edifice, preceded by an elegant porch evoking the magnificence of an Ionic temple, the Herbarium is showed, hosting collections of particular historical importance and others more recent; at present about 150,000 herbarium sheets are kept inside 80 cupboards. The Botanic Gardens ar divided into Hortus Generalis (13,000 sq.m.) and Hortus Siculus (3,000 sq.m.).
The succulents are the richest of the main plant collections in the Gardens, numbering thousands of items. The base collections consists of approximately 2,000 species, prevalently Cactaceae, Euphorbiaceae, Aizoaceae. Also noteworthy is the palm collection comprehending around fifty species, often of considerable size. The Hortus Siculus (originating from 1887) gathers items from the Madonie mountains, from the streams of Northwestern Sicily, from the rocks of Taormina, from Etna, from the areas around Palermo and from Malta.
Besides the typical species belonging to the Mediterranean thicket some exotic species long cultivated in Sicily are present: some species of citrus, the Japanese medlars, apricot, white mulberry and agave.
All these plants are, with full right, part of the flourishing Sicilian vegetal landscape.

Mount Etna, san extraordinary vegetable patrimony
“The vegetable scenery on Etna is a combination of contrasting elements.
Beside the remains of the forest and other aspects of the natural vegetation, varied colours, according to the changes of the seasons, next to cultivated landscapes, testimony to the fertility of the Etna soils, vast, sseemingly lifeless expanses of black lava spread out. Diversities in the vegetable landscape, mainly deriving from the climatic variations, make it possible t odistinguish on the volcano differing levels according to altitude ranges, each characterized by its specific kabndscape and vegetation.
The Etnean vegetable landscape is, therefore, the expression of the delicate balances created along centuries and millennia between the forces of the volcano anhd the world of plants, whose constructive potential has – where undisturbed – always manifested itself” (Emilia Poli Marchese from Etna mito d’Europa, 1997).

copyright Giuseppe Maimone Publisher