__NOTOC__ ''Emilio Chiovenda'' (18 May 1871 – 19 February 1941) was an Italian

botanist Botany, also called , plant biology or phytology, is the science of plant life and a branch of biology. A botanist, plant scientist or phytologist is a scientist who specialises in this field. The term "botany" comes from the Ancient Greek wo ...

. Chiovenda was born in Rome in 1871 to a family originating from rural

Piedmont it, Piemontese , population_note = , population_blank1_title = , population_blank1 = , demographics_type1 = , demographics1_footnotes = , demographics1_title1 = , demographics1_info1 = , demographics1_title2 ...

. He was educated at the Collegio Rosmini in

Stresa Stresa is a town and ''comune'' of about 4,600 residents on the shores of Lake Maggiore in the province of Verbano-Cusio-Ossola in the Piedmont region of northern Italy, about northwest of Milan. It is situated on road and rail routes to the Simpl ...

and

Domodossola Domodossola (; Lombard: Dòm) is a city and ''comune'' in the Province of Verbano-Cusio-Ossola, in the region of Piedmont, northern Italy. It was also known as Oscela, Oscella, Oscella dei Leponzi, Ossolo, Ossola Lepontiorum, and Domo d'Ossola ...

College before graduating in Natural Sciences from the University of Rome in 1898. He frequently collaborated with

Pietro Romualdo Pirotta Pietro Romualdo Pirotta (7 February 1853 – 3 August 1936) was an Italian professor of botany. He was made Knight of the Crown of Italy. Biography He enrolled in the faculty of medicine of the University of Pavia and then changed to the Univer ...

, under whom he had studied in Rome, including on an unfinished catalogue of flora in Rome and on ''The flora of the colony of Eritrea''. He initially specialised in the flora of the

Val d'Ossola The Ossola (, also Valle Ossola or Val d’Ossola) is an area of Italy situated to the north of Lago Maggiore. It lies within the Province of Verbano-Cusio-Ossola. Its principal river is the Toce, and its most important town Domodossola. Et ...

valley in Piedmont, where his family had ancestral roots. He collected around 20,000 plant samples, now preserved at the department of Experimental Evolutionary Biology at Bologna University. At the turn of the century he was appointed the first curator of the Colonial Herbarium (''Erbario coloniale'') in Rome, founded to preserve the plant species brought back by scientific expeditions to Italian colonies in East Africa in the preceding years. In 1909 he travelled extensively in

Eritrea Eritrea ( ; ti, ኤርትራ, Ertra, ; ar, إرتريا, ʾIritriyā), officially the State of Eritrea, is a country in the Horn of Africa region of Eastern Africa, with its capital and largest city at Asmara. It is bordered by Ethiopia ...

and

Ethiopia Ethiopia, , om, Itiyoophiyaa, so, Itoobiya, ti, ኢትዮጵያ, Ítiyop'iya, aa, Itiyoppiya officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country in the Horn of Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the ...

to study indigenous plants, which made him a global authority on the flora of East Africa. In 1915 he moved with the Colonial Herbarium from Rome to Florence, From 1926 to 1929 he was professor of Botany at the University of Catania. In 1930 he was appointed dean of the Faculty of Science at the University of Modena. In 1935 he moved to Bologna, where he headed the Botanical Institute and managed the Botanical Garden. In 1941 Chiovenda died of cerebral thrombosis in Bologna. He was buried in the cemetery of the village of Premosello in Piedmont.

Selected publications

*''Flora della Colonia Eritrea'' 1903 (in collaboration with Romualdo Pirotta) *''Flora delle Alpi Lepontine occidentali'' (1904–1935) *''Flora somala'' Roma, Sindacato italiano arti grafiche, 1929 *''Pteridophyta'' Catania, Tip. Giandolfo, 1929 *''Il papiro in Italia : un interessante problema di biologia, sistematica e fitogeografia'' Forli, Tip. Valbonesi, 1931

References

External links

* * * 1871 births 1941 deaths 19th-century Italian botanists 20th-century Italian botanists {{Italy-botanist-stub