Biography

Italian-Swiss botanist. After serving in the Second World War as commander of a parachute battalion, Luciano Bernardi earned his doctorate in agrarian sciences at the University of Bologna. In 1949 he emigrated to Venezuela, working at first for the Ministry of Agriculture (Division of Soil Conservation), and then as botany assistant in the faculty of forestry sciences at the Universidad de los Andes, Merida. From 1953 to 1959 he succeeded Dr Léon Croizat as professor of dendrology, and also taught zoology, botany and ecology. During these years he collected more than 8000 specimens from the forests of Venezuela and Guyana, collections that form the basis of the herbarium he founded at the university.

In 1960 he moved to Neuchâtel, Switzerland, to teach at the school of pharmacy, but within a year was appointed as curator at the Conservatoire et Jardin botaniques de la Ville de Genève. His work during the 1960s was focused on Weimannia (Cunoniaceae) and members of the Lauraceae family in Venezuela, which for the remainder of his career were the object of his particular attention and care. He began his travels in Africa, visiting Ivory Coast, Liberia, Nigeria, Cameroon, Gabon, Congo, Kenya, and southern Africa. Towards the end of the decade he also travelled frequently in South and North America and visited herbaria in Europe and Russia.

His reseach interests turned for a time toward the Araliaceae of Southeast Asia and Oceania. In 1967 he visited New Zealand, Australia, Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia, Madagascar, the Mascarenes and Réunion to study and collect members of this group. He fell ill and had to be hospitalised at Noumé, but managed to finish his itinerary, albeit six months later than planned. His illness continued to plague him for several years afterwards, requiring frequent stoppages to his work at the Conservatoire. These forced periods of rest, however, spent contemplating Geneva's Lac Leman from his room at the hospital, gave him the idea for his work on riparian flora.

From 1973 to 1975, he conducted field work in southern Africa, Pakistan, India, and the Indian Ocean. When not travelling alone, he was most often accompanied by his brother, Alfonso, or the Genevan zoologist Paul Schauenberg. In 1976 he made an expedition to Venezuela and the Andes with his Geneva colleagues André Charpin and Fernand Jacquemond, and afterwards continued on his own to Paraguay, where he laid the groundwork for his future explorations of the country by visiting the major institutions, and from there went to the Peruvian Andes to inventory tree species in the reserves near Jenaro Herrera, Iquitos, and Pucallpa for Coopération Technique Suisse. His later field work was conducted exclusively in South America, with the exception of a trip to Formosa in 1979-80.

With Egidio Anchisi, head gardener at the alpine garden of Champex, he made his first Paraguayan collections between October 1978 and February 1979; they also explored the Argentinian province of Misiones, in search of species common to both countries. Bernardi continued his investigations of the flora in 1980, in the company of Rodolphe Spichiger and two Paraguayan botanists. From Paraguay he went alone to Chile to collect Podocarpus and then rejoined Spichiger in Peru to complete his 1976 survey of Jenaro Herrero. The results of these expeditions are discussed in his two-volume treatment of Paraguayan trees, Dendrologia Paraguaya (Boissiera: 1984 and 1985), and contributed importantly to the Flora del Paraguay, co-edited with Spichiger and Ramella.

Bernardi retired in 1982 but four years later returned to the Conservatoire to continue work on the Polygalaceae of South America, begun by Chodat, and on the Lauraceae of Paraguay, his last published work. As a field botanist, he collected tens of thousands of specimens, which he distributed widely. He authored over 100 publications, among which are many interesting contributions to botanical history and his autobiography, Le confessioni d'un Ottogenario (1998). Long after it had ceased to be obligatory, he respected scientific tradition by writing his taxonomic descriptions in Latin. Twenty-one taxa are dedicated to him: from Anthurium bernardii Croat to Xylosma bernardianum Steumer.