Biography

Italian teacher and botanist, Cassiano Conzatti lived and worked in Mexico for the majority of his life. Born in the small town of Civezzan he soon moved with his family to Borgo Sacco where he began his studies in the Gymnasium Roveretano. In 1877, following the death of his father, he was forced to abandon his studies in order to help his mother and support his family. For this reason, and due to his impending military service, Conzatti chose to partake in the Mexican colonisation program which both governments were promoting and leaving on the steamboat Atlantico they became one of the first Italian families to settle in Veracruz.

Based in the colony 'Manuel González', the 19-year-old Conzatti was never content to work on the land with the rest of the settlers and leaving his mother in the care of his two brothers he set out for Jalapa. Here he gained employment as an assistant in the Ateneo Veracruzano College and despite poor pay he enjoyed working 16-hour days with the hope of becoming a teacher. Interested in botany from childhood Conzatti had begun to collect plants in his final years in Italy, and in Jalapa he continued this practice studying his specimens and creating a key to the wild and cultivated phanerogamic families of Mexico (published in 1889).

In 1885 Conzatti succeeded in gaining a place at the school Cantonal de Coatepec, again as a teaching assistant, and was finally paid a sufficient salary to send a remittance back to his family. Under Professor Rebsamen he collaborated in the administration of the Practical School, an annex of the Cantonal de Coatepec, and was so successful that by 1889 he was named director of the school Modelo de Orizaba. Two years later Conzatti moved to Oaxaca where he would remain for the rest of his life and began to direct the Escuela Normal de Profesores. He remained in this role for nearly 20 years, teaching education and anthropology and continuing his botanical studies. In 1895 he published a Flora Sinoptica Mexicana with Lucio C. Smith and later a work on the plant genera of Mexico (1905).

In 1909 he began to suffer from a neurological illness and left his post as director of the school, but was soon employed as director of the Botanic Gardens of Oaxaca. At this time the naturalist A. L. Herrera created the Administration of Biological Sciences and Conzatti worked as a collaborator within the organisation, using its extensive library and the botanic garden to further his studies. In 1919 he was named a naturalist explorer, again for Herrera, and used the opportunity to collect all over the state producing a work on Oaxaca and its natural resources in 1920. Two years later Conzatti would return to education and became the Oaxaca delegate for the Public Education Secretariat, serving as a school inspector from 1924 before his retirement in 1927.

During his life Conzatti published 32 works on his local flora, described 92 new plant species and amassed a collection of some 10,000 specimens. Amongst these was the type material for the Rutaceae species Amyris conzattii which was named after its founder by the American botanist Paul Standley. He is also honoured in the epithets Pinguicula conzattii Zamudio & van Marm (Lentibulariaceae) and Passiflora conzattiana Killip (Passifloraceae).

Sources:
Rzedowski, J., Calderón de Rzedowski, G. and Butanda, A., 2009, Los principales colectores de plantas activos en México entre 1700 y 1930

Beltrán, E., 1951, "La vida de un hombre ejemplar", Revista de la Sociedad Mexicana de Historia Natural, 12: 303-318.