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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Environment
Phoebe Weston

‘Inestimable importance’: 500-year-old cache of pressed flowers reveals new secrets

Scans of Ulisse Aldrovandi's pressed flower species glued to a page of a book
Scans of the specimens, including (on the left) a Stratiotes aloides from 1551, collected in the Valle Padusa marshes north of Bologna, once abundant but now on the verge of extinction in Italy. Photograph: Alma Mater Studiorum/Biblioteca Universitaria di Bologna

A collection of pressed flowers taken from the hillsides of Bologna 500 years ago is unlocking knowledge about how the climate crisis and human migration is changing landscapes in northern Italy.

Picked between 1551 and 1586 by the Renaissance naturalist Ulisse Aldrovandi, the 5,000 delicately cut and dried plants form one of the richest collections of its time.

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