The plants that shape the image of the Ligurian Riviera and French Cote d 'Azur today are clearly the palm trees. However, these were not built until the mid-19th century. In the 19th century, naturalized here. Their ancestors come largely from North Africa. The agaves, oranges, magnolias, as well as the most diverse cactus varieties, were also imported everywhere.
The German agronomist, landscape designer and gardener Ludwig Winter played an important role in this. He planted for it in the sixties of the 19th century. In the 19th century, exotic seedlings from all over the world were commissioned by Sir Thomas Hanbury in England.
In doing so, he laid the foundation for the design of numerous public gardens and subsequently private gardens.
Knowing well about these fundamental changes in the landscape of the Riviera, the then highly regarded German botanist Eduard Strasburger, in his book "Forays on the Riviera" around 1890, gave his thoughts on the former appearance of this area:
' What might the Riviera have looked like before the cultivation of the oil tree began, when palm trees and cypresses were still missing and the Agrumi's smell of smell didn't fill the air? She was covered in evergreen shrubs, while dense coniferous forest capped the heights. The image of vegetation had to be quite different; For its appearance was determined by the growth of the species, while the character of the landscape that we now consider to be the Italian is based on the effective emergence of individual distinct plant forms and their plastic manifestation.
How characteristic of this soil more than two thousand years of culture that those plants that conjure the image of Italy so vividly before the soul are not rustic to this country. They came from the Orient, and … unfolded and refined on this floor.
The citrons and oranges received the classical lands from the Semites, which had taken over the same ones from the Indians. The oil and fig tree, the vine and the palm tree were in care at the Semites long before they made victorious forceful forwards to the west. The Cultus of the laurel and the myrtle crossed the Mediterranean from the east. The Cypress does not have its Heimath in Italy, but on the Greek islands and Lebanon; Yes, even from the umbrella-shaped pine tree, which serves as a model for the plume of the plume of Mount Vesuvius, one has, this time wrongly, doubted that it is a real Italian plant.
And when, on the other hand, the great cultural impulse that emanated from the discovery of the new world was to be embodied on Italian soil in typical plant forms, it brought it the agaves, the prickly, pale green opuntia that are so good to the rocky The beach of Italy fit as if they had always been destined for him, were only arrived of the same in the fourteenth century of America. "
Forays on the Riviera
from
Eduard Strasburger
Publisher Paetel
Copyright free issue
Reprint of the botanical professor's travelogue, first published in 1895, which includes not only the description of land and people, but also an inventory of the local fauna,
Available from Amazon Kindle.
Above quote is from this book. (P. 140 ff)