Filippo Parlatore

Who was Filippo Parlatore?

Filippo Parlatore was an Italian botanist.

Italian botanist, b. at Palermo, 8 Aug., 1816; d. at Florence, 9 Sept., 1877, a devout and faithful Catholic. He studied medicine at Palermo, but practiced only for a short time, his chief activity being during the cholera epidemic of 1837. Although at that time he had been an assistant professor of anatomy, a subject on which he had already written, he soon gave up all other interests to devote his entire attention to botany. He first made a study of the flora of Sicily, publishing in 1838 Flora panormitana; he also dealt with the Sicilian flora in later works. In 1840 he left home to begin his extended botanical expeditions. He travelled all through Italy, then into Switzerland, to France and to England, his longest stay being at Kew. His part in the Third Congress of Italian naturalists held at Florence in 1841 was of significance for him and for the development of botanical studies in Italy. At this congress, in his celebrated memoir Sulla botanica in Italia, he proposed, among other things, that a general herbarium be established at Florence. This proposal was adopted. Grand Duke Leopold sought his assistance for this herbarium, gave him the post of professor of botany at the museum of natural sciences, and made him director of the botanical garden connected with the museum. For more than three decades Parlatore was most active in fulfilling the duties of these positions, one of his principal services being the contribution of Collections botaniques du musée royale de physique et d'histoire naturelle to the great collection entitled Erbario centrale italiano. His own private herbarium is now a part of the central herbarium, containing about 1900-2500 fascicules. In 1849 he made an investigation of the flora of the Mont-Blanc chain of the Alps; in 1851 he explored those of Northern Europe, Lapland, and Finland; the reports of theses two expeditions appeared respectively in 1850 and 1854.