Giuseppe Raddi

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Giuseppe Raddi. Lithograph by G. Galli

Giuseppe Raddi (born July 9, 1770 in Florence , † September 6, 1829 in Rhodes ) was one of the most important botanists of his time. Its official botanical author's abbreviation is " Raddi ".

Life

Raddi was the son of Stefano and Orsola Pandolfini. Due to the limited economic situation of his family, he was forced to begin an apprenticeship in a pharmacy. Together with his childhood friend Gaetano Savi (1769-1844), a later naturalist, he became acquainted with Ottaviano Targioni Tozzetti (1755-1829), who recognized the botanical talent of the two and promoted them. At the age of 15 (1785) Raddi became assistant to Attilio Zuccagni (1754–1807), director of the Botanical Garden of Florence. He stayed there until 1795 when he became curator of the Natural History Museum, also in Florence.

Raddi named two types of liverwort after his friends in Florence: the Metzgeria after the engraver and art dealer Johann Baptist Metzger from Staufen im Breisgau , and the Pellia after the lawyer Leopoldo Pelli-Fabbroni.

plant

At the beginning of the 19th century Raddi published his first work on mushrooms and cryptogams , which he had collected and determined in Tuscany. From 1807 to 1814 he was only able to continue his scientific work at irregular intervals, mainly because in 1807 the Natural History Museum of Florence was closed. In 1817 he published his work on the Jungermanniales , an order of liverworts .

In 1814, Grand Duke Ferdinand III. from Habsburg-Tuscany to his sponsor. He sent Raddi to Brazil in 1817 as part of the Austrian Brazil Expedition , primarily to investigate the cryptogams there. Accompanied by Johann Baptist von Spix , Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius and Johann Baptist Emanuel Pohl , he sailed from Livorno to Rio de Janeiro , for which the ship needed 82 days. Raddi spent eight months exploring the area around Rio de Janeiro in particular. On his return he brought with him extensive collections of plants and plant seeds, which are among other things in the herbaria of the universities of Pisa , Bologna and Florence and are still researched today. It was mainly cryptogams, but also black-mouthed and sourgrass plants . Even seed plants and zoological material were part of the harvest. In the works that resulted from the expedition, Raddi described 156 new plant species. He worked with other well-known botanists, such as Antonio Bertoloni , to whom he gave various species that are now in the Hortus Siccus Exoticus in Bologna.

Raddi was a participant in the French-Tuscan expedition from 1828 to 1829 to Egypt along the Nile to Wadi Halfa . The expedition was led by Jean-François Champollion , the decipherer of the hieroglyphs , and the Italian Egyptologist Ippolito Rosellini . Raddi put on extensive collections of plants, mammals, birds, fish, snails and mineralogical specimens. During the return trip he fell ill with dysentery and died in Rhodes . The local consuls of Sardinia and Austria made sure that his collections still reached Tuscany.

Although Raddi is best known as a botanist, his collections in Egypt also make his broad interests clear. Between 1820 and 1826 he described various new reptile species that he had found in Brazil, and he determined the type of horned frog .

Honors

The genus Raddia of sweet grasses , based on the collections from Brazil, was named by Antonio Bertoloni in honor of Raddi. The plant genera Raddiella Swallen from the sweet grass family (Poaceae) and Raddisia Leandro from the spindle tree family (Celastraceae) are named after him.

Works

  • Jungermanniografia etrusca . In: Memorie di matematica e di fisica della Società italiana delle Science , Modena 1820. online
  • Crittogame Brasiliane , 2 volumes, Modena, 1822. online
  • Agrostografia Brasiliensis sive enumeratio plantarum ad familias naturales graminum et ciperiodarum spectantium quas in Brasilia collegit et desripsit , Lucca 1823. online
  • Plantarum Brasiliensum Nova Genera et Species Novae, vel minus cognitae , Aloisius Pezzati, Florence 1825.

literature

Web links

Commons : Giuseppe Raddi  - collection of images, videos and audio files
 Wikispecies: Giuseppe Raddi  - Species Directory

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jungermanniografia etrusca , p. 46.
  2. ^ List of reptile species described by Giuseppe Raddi in the Reptile Database
  3. ↑ Lotte Burkhardt: Directory of eponymous plant names - Extended Edition. Part I and II. Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin , Freie Universität Berlin , Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-946292-26-5 doi: 10.3372 / epolist2018 .
  4. ↑ Complete list of published works in: Alla memoria di Giuseppe Raddi , Florence 1830 online ; some previously unpublished works are collected in GB Marini-Bettolo (ed.): Giuseppe Raddi, uno dei 40. Scritti inediti, 1817-1828 , Rome 1981
personal data
SURNAME Raddi, Giuseppe
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Raddi (botanical author abbreviation)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Florentine botanist
DATE OF BIRTH July 9, 1770
PLACE OF BIRTH Florence
DATE OF DEATH September 6, 1829
Place of death Rhodes