Classificare per conoscere, identificare per riconoscere

Flora d'Italia

This second edition of the Flora of Italy, complemented by the Digital Flora of Italy, summarizes the results of the botanical exploration in Italy during the last two hundred years. Italy is not only a beautiful country of extraordinary landscapes, rich environments, valleys and mountains along the whole Apennine Peninsula, in its centre the Eternal City and from north to south filled with many towns with incomparable art treasures. Placed in the mid of the Mediterranean Sea, Italy has also an astoundingly rich flora spreading from the shores to the highest mountains, with floristic environmental hotspots in the Alps (Dolomites, Mt. Baldo, Maritime Alps), along the Tyrrhenian coast, and on…

Le flore come opere aperte: nuove soluzioni per l’archiviazione e il reperimento di informazioni botaniche

Negli ultimi due decenni si sono verificati numerosi cambiamenti nell’approccio sistematico-tassonomico allo studio dei vegetali. La moderna delimitazione di ciascuna specie può includere da un lato conoscenze derivanti dall’indagine a livello ecosistemico e all’estremo opposto quelle derivanti dall’indagine a livello molecolare. La tassonomia del 21° secolo sarà sempre più fortemente orientata verso una definizione “olistica” delle specie, che verranno archiviate non più solo negli erbari, ma anche, e soprattutto, in archivi digitali interattivi, progettati per fungere da “collettori di informazione tassonomica multilivello”. In tali archivi possono infatti confluire dati morfologici, biom…

Educational or emotional languages? An interactive experiment with the Lucanian flora (S-Italy)

In the frame of dissemination activities for a still-in-progress work on the Sites of Community Importance (see EU Directive 92/43) of Basilicata (a region of Southern Italy), an interactive tool (IIT) for the identification of vascular plants growing there has been illustrated to two groups of people, following two different approaches: one focused on textual parts and on scientific accuracy, the other on images and on the visual comparison of different objects. The reactions were measured in terms of number of accesses to the IIT, elapsed time from the demonstration to the first individual access, and number of queries in the first week after the IIT was distributed. The most clicked opti…

Il contributo delle scienze botaniche

Florintesa: patrimonio floristico e Orti botanici in Italia

Agricoltura di qualità e rete natura 2000: “laboratori” del cambiamento

Through the centuries, rural communities have managed their environment creating a rich landscape diversity. This represents an historical heritage both for the region and for humanity because the "world" itself represents the sum of widespread fragmentation processes following specific laws. The intense socio-economic changes of the last century, the rise of the "global" markets, in particular, have radically changed the landscape configuration and its natural quality across Europe. Natura 2000 network and the network of protected areas are currently the "open laboratories" to test a model of development that is compatible with the priceless treasure such as: species, habitats, landscape a…

OGM: effetti sulla biodiversità e sulle catene trofiche.

La scelta delle piante destinate al verde ornamentale tra percezioni e cambiamenti: Anthosart green tool, uno strumento per conoscere, selezionare, adottare le piante della nostra quotidianità secondo criteri sostenibili

The presence and importance of plant life on the planet does not seem to reach our sensory perception, therefore activate reactions of interest, and correct ecological behaviour. The increasing number of extinct species witnesses the human oblivion towards ecosystems. The concept of plant blindness describes the phenomenon that produces significant consequences on nature conservation. Urban green infrastructure, part of our daily life, is the right place to re-connect with plant systems. Designing and creating “built green” by means of nature-based solutions and local species pool is the main goal of Anthosart green tool, a free and user-friendly on-line tool, which can be useful for design…

Impact of information technology on future floras

Some important facilities offered by the information technology to innovate the development of traditional floras are illustrated and discussed. These include: random access interactive tools for the identification of species, low cost, easy updating, virtually unlimited space for high resolution images and texts, on-line utilities, strong synergy between authors and users. It is argued that the combination of printed books with integrated digital utilities and data-sources is the most desirable structure for future floras.

Economia, ecologia e tecnologia: riflessioni su una convivenza difficile

Diversitas and Biodiversity: the roots of a 21st century myth

The first on conceptualization of what we now term “biodiversity” was given by Federico Cesi about 400 yrs ago. By the light of the first formulation of this concept, the historical changes in the human approach to “biodiversity” are discussed. The popularity of this term shifted from scientific to socio-political contexts and its significance became progressively blurred by eco-social implications. Biodiversity, today, is perceived by most as an ideal container of the remains of a vanishing traditional landscape, where man and nature lived together harmoniously. This is in contrast with the man’s desire for self-assertion, which has accompanied the civilisation process from its origins up …

Considerazioni floristiche per un nuovo manifesto del terzo paesaggio

Gli OGM e la flora italiana

The Mediterranean dwarf shubs: origin and adaptive radiation

Basing on literature data, a synthesis on the morphologic, anatomic and physiologic adaptations of the Mediterranean dwarf shrubs is outlined. Three different functional types can be recognized: saltbushes, thermo-xerophilous fire-resistant dwarf shrubs and orophilous cushion-shrubs. The thermo-xerophilous fire-resistant dwarf shrubs mainly derive from the Mesogean flora and differentiated after the beginning of the Oligocene, and especially from the Pliocene, in the coastal regions around the Tethys Sea, as the result of a local adaptive radiation triggered by the shifting from subhumid to semiarid climatic conditions at the boundary between the tropical and the temperate zone. For the oth…