Botanical Garden of Florence
Pteridophytes
All collections
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Pteridophytes constitute a large group of vascular plants that includes ferns, horsetails and lycopods.
There are currently more than 200 specimen living in the Garden, some of which were introduced in the late 19th and early 20th century. The first notice of ferns in the Botanical Garden of Florence, however, dates back to 1748, just when the director Giovanni Targioni Tozzetti listed as many as 12 species of ferns in the catalogue of cultivated plants. Unfortunately, due to the incomplete information contained in that document, we have no information on the provenance and period of acquisition of several specimen, which, however, have certainly been in the collection for several decades. In recent times there has been a considerable increase in the collection with specimen collected in the wild during various missions to Mexico, India and Nepal, Uganda and Sumatra (1980s and 1990s).
The group of exotic pteridophytes, all of which are cultivated in pots, is mostly housed in a dedicated greenhouse known as the Ferns Greenhouse and has over 160 specimen. A small group of temperate species can be found in the winter season inside the Cold Greenhouse and, in spring-summer, under the shadow of the large trees along the central avenue of the Garden.
The wild autochthonous species, at present more than thirty species cultivated instead in the open ground in a dedicated display, are being increased in recent months with collections carried out by the Botanical Garden staff in various locations in Tuscany in order to enhance the importance of the collection, when referring to regional biodiversity.