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Nature 452, 414 (27 March 2008) | doi:10.1038/452414a; Published online 26 March 2008
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Hidden treasures: Florence's botanical collection
Alison Abbott1
Abstract
Italy's first centralized museum of plants was one of the early flowerings of the unification movement. Alison Abbott reports on an important scientific legacy.
During the nineteenth-century movement for the unification of Italy known as the risorgimento, governors of the fractious independent states on the Italian peninsula were wary of gatherings of intellectuals — they tended to talk unification politics, and to be patriots. It is a measure of the open-mindedness of the liberal Leopold II, Grand Duke of Tuscany, that in 1841 he allowed the Third Congress of Italian Scientists to be held in his capital, Florence, despite that incendiary label 'Italian'.
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