Paolo Boccone
Italian Botanist (1633-1704)
Paolo Silvio Boccone (24 April 1633 – 22 December 1704) was a botanist from Sicily, whose interest in plants had been sparked at a young age. Born in a rich family, he was able to dedicate most of his life to the study of botany.
Life
Born in Palermo, he often visited the botanical garden (l'Orto Botanico) founded in Messina by the Roman doctor Pietro Castelli, who became his instructor. He traveled across Sicily, to Corsica, Paris, and London and took a doctor's degree in Padua. He published Recherches et observations naturelles (Paris, 1671; illustrated and greatly enlarged edition Amsterdam, 1674), which concerned itself with various theories of nature, and supplied important contributions to the fields of palaeontology, medicine and toxicology.
He was employed as court botanist to Ferdinando II de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany as well as to Ferdinando's son, Cosimo III.
In the work Museo di piante rare della Sicilia, Malta, Corsica, Italia, Piemonte, e Germania (1697), Boccone described many rare plants of Sicily, Malta, Italy, Piedmont, and Germany. A fungus scientifically named Pisolithus tinctorius was called in the Sicilian language catatùnfuli, and Boccone writes that this fungus was employed by the women of Messina in order to dye cloth.
In 1682, Boccone entered the order of the Cistercians and took the name Silvio. After this conversion, Boccone is said to have dropped his avid study of botany, though he continued his travels.
Boccone had been widely regarded by the scientific community, and was in contact with many European naturalists.
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This entry incorporates text from “Paolo Boccone” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.