Trinacria (gro) Early summer brings visitors to Sicily an island in full bloom. Nowhere else in the Mediterranean there is such a variety of plants. More than 3000 plants of all kinds are at home on the island. Many lead a hidden existence in well-tempered niches on the slopes of Mount Etna and in the mountainous interior, while others provide color on sandy beaches, such as the silvery-blue sea thistle, which glistens and glows especially in southern Sicily. Those who travel through the interior, after driving through seemingly endless fields of wheat and rye, understand why Sicily once became the “granary of the Roman Empire.”
Even Goethe raved about the rich botany
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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, not only a poet but also a natural scientist, searched for the primordial plant at the end of the 80-ies of the 18th century in the then just opened Botanical Garden of Palermo and recorded numerous botanical findings in drawings. In Taormina, Goethe believed to have found the true Arcadia and incidentally, he recorded in his two-volume “Italian Journey”, Italy could only be understood by those who had also come to know Sicily.
Teaching and research facility of the university – and crowd puller
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The Botanical Garden of Palermo, located on via Lincoln not far from the promenade on the seashore below the Arabic-looking district of Kalsa, is one of the special crowd-pullers of the island metropolis. The garden with its neoclassical entrance building was opened in 1786, and already three years, not least because of the great interest, the expansion began, which lasted in stages until 1913. With its palm avenues, aquariums, gardens, fountains. Lagoons and greenhouses, the Orto Botanico di Palermo today has an extension of about 10 hectares. The Botanical Garden is used and maintained as a teaching and research facility by the University of Palermo. The facility includes a modern herbarium mediterraneum with 6000 square meters and since 1993 also a gene database to safeguard the regional flora.