2024-01-19 14:15:47
The plant was located by experts from Milan’s Bicocca University.
As part of a study of plant species in the park of the Royal Villa in the northern Italian city of Monza, a rare plant from the Caucasus region has been discovered, which, according to experts, comes from the park of Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna. The Royal Villa of Monza (Villa Reale) was built on behalf of Empress Maria Theresa in 1777 as a summer residence for her son Ferdinand I, who was then governor of Lombardy.
“Klasea quinquefolia (Willd) Greuter & Wagenitz” (five-leaf hermaphrodite) is the Latin name of the rare plant that was located in the park of Monza by the expert Augusto Crippa. It was identified thanks to the collaboration with the University of Milan Bicocca and the Natural History Museum of Milan. Until this discovery, the only place in the world where the species was known to exist outside of its original range in the Caucasus was the park of Schönbrunn Palace. Using document research, the research team was able to reconstruct the history of the plant, which was first collected in the Caucasus by the German aristocratic researcher Friedrich August Marschall von Bieberstein and brought to Berlin to the botanist Carl Ludwig Wildenow, who described it as new to science in 1803.
Since the beginning of the 19th century, the species, which produces showy, cornflower-like inflorescences, became widespread as a cultivated plant in the gardens of the palaces of European capitals. The plant was first depicted in a valuable botanical table from 1816 in “Curtis’s Botanical Magazine”. The experts assume that she came to Monza at this point directly from Vienna or other cities in the Habsburg Empire.
The imperial architect Giuseppe Piermarini was entrusted with the construction of the Royal Villa in Monza. He had previously worked on the construction of the castle in Caserta, southern Italy, which served as a model for this castle. The Royal Villa of Monza is designed as a u-shaped building in the neoclassical style. The imposing castle building has almost 700 rooms, all of which are connected and sumptuously furnished.
1705674550
#Rare #plant #Monza #Park #Schönbrunn #Palace
