Biography

Palermo born botanist and, for a short while, practising medic. Filippo Parlatore is responsible for founding the Central Italian Herbarium (FI) and for publishing the first five volumes of the Flora Italiana. Having undertaken botanical excursions in Sicily alongside his benefactor, B. Bernardi, from the age of 15, he graduated in medicine in the city of his birth in 1837. He immediately began to practise this same year during the cholera epidemic. Soon, however, his attention turned exclusively to the study of botany and in 1938 he published his first major work, the Flora Panormitaria (Palermo). Three years later he began to travel in Italy, Switzerland, France and England in order to visit botanical institutes and meet with major scientists of the time.

While based in Paris Parlatore sent a proposition to the Congress of Italian Scientists which was held in Florence in 1841, in which he lamented the paucity of Italy's botanical collections and suggested the creation of a central Italian herbarium in what was at the time the capital city, Florence. Many of the botanists present at the conference were sympathetic to his views and without delay donated their specimens to the cause. Hearing this news, Parlatore requested that a set of his Sicilian specimens be sent from Palermo to Florence to bulk out the growing collection.

In 1842 he was called by the Grand-Duke of Tuscany, Leopold II, to serve in Florence as professor of botany, director of the botanical garden and director of the newly founded Herbarium Centrale Italicum; at this time Parlatore deposited his entire collection in Florence. Fulfilling his role he began an expedition in 1849 with the aim of enhancing the herbarium which took him through the Alps to Northern Europe and Scandinavia where his progress was interrupted by frost-bite which attacked his feet in Oslo.

Back in Florence he set to work studying and updating the layout of the herbarium whilst also working on the Flora Italiana, which was published between 1848 and 1873. During this time he also published several works on botanical theory. Interestingly, Parlatore also maintained a large collection of wax plants and fruits at the herbarium, depicting plant anatomy and pathology. He contributed monographic accounts to the Prodromus of De Candolle (Coniferae and Gnetaceae) and to Philip Barker Webb's Histoire naturelle des Iles Canaries (Umbelligeri and Graminae). Webb, whom he had met in Paris, donated his entire collection to the herbarium in Florence; some 500,000 specimens from his travels in Europe, Morocco and Brazil.

Serving as president of the 1874 Botanical Congress in Florence, Parlatore presented a bust of Webb to the Botanical Institute in order to honour his contributions. He is also responsible for publishing the first volume of the Giornale Botanico Italiano (1844) as well as creating and presiding over the Tuscan Society of Horticulture (1848). The genus Parlatore was named for him by Edmond Boissier in 1842.

Sources:
A. Abbott, 2008, "Hidden treasures: Florence's botanical collection", Nature, 452: 414
P. Cuccuini and C. Nepi, 1999, Herbarium Centrale Italicum (the Phanerogamic Section): The Genesis and Structure of a Herbarium
G. Moggi, 1979, "Presentation of the centenary of Filippo Parlatore's death (1816-1877) ", Webbia, 34(1): 51-57
J. Rompel, 1913, "Filippo Parlatore", The original Catholic Encyclopedia, 11: 504-505.