Italy and Corsica
In 2019, I received an invitation to speak at the 2020 Murabilia Plant Festival in Lucca, Italy. Little did I know at the time, it would be 2026 before the trip would finally happen.
Botanizing in Italy and Corsica
Trip objectives
In 2019, I received an invitation to speak at the 2020 Murabilia Plant Festival in Lucca, Italy. As we got closer to the festival date in September of that year, it became obvious to festival organizers that the severity of the COVID epidemic in Italy would not allow the festival to be held for several years. Little did I know at the time, it would be 2026 before the trip would finally happen.
The Murabilia Plant Festival is a three-day event in early September, so to make the trip worthwhile, I scheduled time before and after for botanizing in the region. Lucca is in north central Italy, just over one hour from the Ligurian Sea coast to the west, one hour west of Florence (Firenza), just over three hours from Rome to the south, and three hours south of the Southern end of the Alps.
My plan was to spend a few days botanizing in the mountains, Lucca, then a few days on the adjacent French island of Corsica. Corsica detached from the rest of Europe between 15 and 30 million years ago, and due to that lengthy isolation, has over 300 endemic species that occur nowhere else in the world. Compared to the alkaline soils in much of Italy, Corsica has acidic granite-based soil. Politically, Corsica was sold to France in 1768, and is also renowned for being the birthplace of French Emperor, Napoleon Bonaparte.
We typically make a list of plant groups to target, but we are even more interested in seeing what we find that we might not know exists, especially when it comes to looking for plants that are more heat and cold tolerant than material that’s currently cultivated. Ferns were high on my list, along with Ruscus, bulbs, Asparagus, Asarum europaeum, Helleborus, and hardy aroids. Most collections are in the form of seeds and spores, while small divisions are occasionally made where seeds are unavailable or there is an exceptional clonal form. Joining me on the expedition was Zac Hill, our Adjunct Researcher, now working at Charlotte’s Bartlett Arboretum.
Saturday Aug 29/ Sunday Aug 30 – Trippin’
On Saturday August 29, I boarded the overnight flight from Raleigh/Durham to Florence, Italy, with a connection at London’s Heathrow Airport. Standing in line to board at Raleigh, I spotted a long-time friend and colleague, NCSU Distinguished Alumni, Debbie Hamrick, who was on the same flight, on her way to Ireland.
The connection at Heathrow was at best, confounding, since I had to book my flight as two separate tickets…a long story. Moving from one terminal to another, with a commuter rail that evidently often is unfunctional, made for a stress-filled start to the trip. Thankfully, the 12-hour layover provided needed work time in the airport.
One of more bizarre procedures at Heathrow, is that the airport doesn’t let you know which gate you plane will use until 50 minutes before departure time. Since walking from one end of the terminal could take up to 20 minutes, this creates a rather unnecessary stress on travelers. One would think that in this day and time, they could manage the schedule a bit better.
Once we boarded the British Airways connection to Florence, the flight attendant announced that Italy required that we all be sprayed with insecticide before we departed. With only seconds of notice folks with chemical sensitivities had no time to object, as the flight attendant walked the aisle with a can of misting fly spray sitting atop of his bald head.
The chemical used is a 2% d-phenothrin aerosol, which is regularly used as fly spray. While I certainly agree that it’s a low impact pesticide, the idea that no notice was given when people purchased their ticket is inexcusable, and our thoughts go out to the flight attendant whose regular head drenches can’t be a good thing, despite what he’s been told.
Pesticides are all rated with an LD50, which is the lethal dose in milligrams per kilogram of body weight, required to kill 50% of a test population of rats. d-phenothrin has an oral LD 50 of >5,000, and a dermal toxicity of 2000. For a frame of reference, that is the identical toxicity of glyphosate (Roundup).
The National Pesticide Information Center has the following on its website about d-phenothrin:
“Signs of acute toxicity in animals may include aggression, increased stimulus response, convulsive twitching, tremors, coma, and death.11 Other signs of toxicity in animals include excessive salivation, ear twitching, and paw flicking from oral and dermal sensory nerve stimulation. Animals may also experience vomiting, diarrhea, and topical allergic reactions.12 Cats may be particularly sensitive to d-phenothrin. Neurotoxic symptoms including tremors, excess salivation and seizures have been reported following treatment of cats with spot-on flea and tick products containing d-phenothrin. As a result, flea and tick spot-on products containing d-phenothrin were canceled for use on cats and kittens in 2005.1”
I should add that the flight attendant did advise everyone to close their eyes and mouths before getting sprayed. Perhaps they should spray the British Airline administrative staff with the same pesticide and see if they object, but I digress.
My insect-free flight landed at 10:30pm in the small Florence airport, where we then stood in line for nearly an hour while we cleared immigration. This took much more time than normal, due to the roll out of the new EU Immigration Entrance system. Thankfully, once we cleared immigration/customs, the cab ride to my nearby hotel was short.
Monday, August 31 – Zoning Out
It was obvious that we’d changed hardiness zones, by the hotel plantings, which included citrus and a nice patch of Agave americana ‘Marginata’. Most of lowland Italy is Zone 9/10. While I expected a dry climate, the humidity during our entire trip was every bit equal to the Southeast US. Also interesting is that the rainfall is Lucca is identical to that in Raleigh…46 inches annually. The main difference is that their peak rainfall season is in late fall, while ours is July and August. Rising to 1,500’ elevation is still on the border of Zone 8/9, and at 2,000’, we’re probably a solid Zone 8. At 3,000’, we’re probably a cold Zone 8, getting close to the 7b line. Despite this, many of these regions above 2,000’ see snow, but they generally don’t see extreme cold temperatures. We tried to stay no higher than 3-4,000’, since plants tend to lose heat tolerance above those elevations in this region.
I rendezvoused with Zac at the hotel breakfast buffet, after which, we took a cab to the airport to pick up our SIXT rental car. From there, it was out into the field. Since Ruscus was one of our target genera, we headed toward the mountainous region south of Lucca, where Ruscus hybrids between Ruscus hypoglossum and Ruscus aculeatus had been reported. Since we didn’t have precise locations, we simply drove until we spotted an interesting spot, where we could pull off the road.
Our first stop near the town of Iesa at 1,170’ elevation, provided our first chance to become familiar with the regional vegetation. Dominant woody plants found here, included the famed cork oak, Quercus suber. Many of the larger plants had been harvested, which makes the plants look terrible, but does no permanent harm. A plant needs to be about 25 years old before the bark is harvestable, and then harvesting can be repeated about every decade. Although the bark has many uses, wine corks remain at the top of the list, and if you’ve ever been to Italy, you know they must need an incredible number of corks.
The forest here was also filled with Arbutus unedo, one of my personal favorite evergreen small trees, with its amazing bright red fruit in winter. We have grown this successfully for years at JLBG. One shrub that confused both Zac and I, due to its very hairy foliage, was the common Viburnum tinus. Although we’ve grown this for decades, all of the material in the US has glabrous foliage. Sadly, the splashed variegated form, which would have been a treat, was on the non-import list.
I fell in love with Pistacia lentiscus, a stunning, fine-textured small tree, with prominent clusters of reddish fruit. This would certainly be worth a try. The dominant conifer here was Juniperus communis, a circumboreal species, of which we already grow from our collections in Korea, and South Carolina. We have a particular fascination with plant species with a worldwide distribution, and thankfully, these were in seed.
Southern Europena Ash, Fraxinus ornus looked great, both the foliage and bark. For years, I have admired the specimen at the JC Raulston Arboretum, so it was great to see it in the wild. One thing I had not expected to see, was so many heaths and heathers. I’ve always known these as plants that loved acidic, organic soils, but here they were growing in bone dry, rock, alkaline soil. These would most certainly be worth a trial at JLBG. Here, the dominant species was the giant tree heath, Erica arborea, a plant that we’ve never tried, but is certainly now in our sights.
I was also surprised to see Cornus sanguinea growing and thriving here, as we have been unsuccessful with this species. I now realize that the genetic material in the trade is certainly not from hot, humid climates, as we had found here. This is also typically touted as a plant that needs moist soil, which was certainly not the case here, where it also grew in dry alkaline rocky ground. The smallest shrub in the are was the rock rose, Cistus salvifolius, which made 2’ tall x 2’ wide specimens.
There were two ferns here, the rock garden-sized Asplenium trichomanes, and the cutleaf Asplenium onopteris, both of which were growing in full shade, and fortunately, full of spore. I had previously collected the latter from both Crete and the Balkans, but they didn’t survive. Now that we have more crevice and rock garden space, we should be a much better habitat for both ferns.
At our second stop, we spotted our first patches of the ubiquitous Ruscus aculeatus, even finding a few ripe seeds. The most exciting find for me, at this site, was a patch of Polypodium interjectum fern, which was just re-emerging after a summer dormancy, which is the case with many Mediterranean plants. Here, we also first saw the native Ajuga reptans, along with some stunning plants of adult ivy (Hedera helix). One of our favorite sedges is the blue-foliaged Carex flacca, and here it grew in the woods alongside the ajuga. Another familiar fern that we would first encounter here, and subsequently far too often, is the worldwide distributed, weedy bracken fern, Pteridium aquilinum.
I was particularly excited to see English holly, Ilex aquifolium at this site. While this species is a major landscape staple in cool summer climates, it does not thrive for us. After seeing it here, it’s obvious that we simply need genetics from this hot, humid region for it to thrive for us in NC.
Stop 3 and 4, near the Tocchi Nature Reserve, yielded more new plants, including the shrubby evergreen, narrow-leaf false privet, Phillyrea angustifolia. This certainly has the potential for garden selection. One plant we wish could be imported, is an amazingly cutleaf form of the European Turkey oak, Quercus cerris. This variable species is certainly worth making some splendid selections for grafting. Here, we also found some amazing cliffs, with patches of two rock garden-sized ferns, Asplenium ceterach and Asplenium trichomanes.
Our fifth stop was the gem of the day. The steep roadside bank wasn’t particularly exciting, until we reached the stream area at the bottom, which was like a botanical oasis. Here, 4-5’ tall Ruscus aculeatus were prevalent, growing both on cliffs, and in running water, something I’d never guessed possible. The fern diversity at the site was phenomenal. The most dominant species were Dryopteris filix-mas, Athyrium filix-femina, and Struthiopteris (Blechnum) spicant. The 3’ tall x 7’ wide clump of royal fern (Osmunda regalis) nearby, made us feel right at home. With the glaring light penetrating the tree canopy, it was hard to capture the splendor of this site.
Our final stop of the day is in Fossatello, about halfway between Florence and Rome. This site was similar to site 5, although not quite as rich. We did spot flowering Cyclamen hederifolium for the first time, along with Geranium nodosum. Since I was on the lookout for Asparagus species, I was thrilled to find a nice clump of what could be Asparagus tenuifolius, growing in the shade. I had also hoped to find the European wild ginger, Asarum europeum growing in hot, humid sites, and indeed such was the case here. Facing a three-hour drive to our hotel in Lucca, it was time to end the botanizing for the day and head north before we lost daylight.
We arrived in Lucca near sunset, and with the help of our trustworthy Google maps, tried to find our hotels. Zac’s hotel was relatively easy to find, but mine, less so. Google kept telling us to park and walk, while giving us instructions that didn’t match the conditions on the ground. We finally gave up on driving, and walked around until we found the hotel entrance, which was unfortunately unmanned. After a concerning wait, a hotel staffer arrived and informed us that we were at the wrong entrance, and had also missed the parking lot, which was obviously unknown to Google. As we would soon learn, squeezing into and out of the parking lot was one of the more challenging aspects of the trip. While we had rented a mid-sized SUV so we could take four people into the field, many folks around town drove what were truly mini-sized vehicles, which are far easier to navigate through the narrow city roads.
If you’ve never been to Italy, both the downtown, and mountain roads are extraordinarily narrow. To park at my hotel, we had to traverse two blocks of super narrow streets, then make a nearly impossible, mis-aligned turn between the two lanes. It took Zac navigating outside the car, to have any chance of getting parked without damaging the rental car.
After a full day, it was finally time to sit down for a quick sampling of the amazing Italian cuisine.
Tuesday September 1 – The Redneck Alps
For day two of field work, we headed north into the Apennine Mountains. We stopped for a supply of bottled water, now we had realized the extent of the heat and humidity we were facing. I am truly impressed with the cheese and meat section of the area supermarkets.
We reached this precursor of the Alps in just over 1.5 hours from our hotel. Water bottle fill-up sites were scattered along our route, where clean mountain water was available for homeowners to fill up their glass bottles. These sites were often home to Hart’s tongue fern, Asplenium scolopendrium, which hung from the steep cliffs, often growing alongside Cyclamen hederifolium.
Our next stop was just after the village of Matraia at 1180’ elevation, where we spotted what turned out to be a fern gold mine. We first spotted a patch of southern maidenhair fern, Adiantum capillus-veneris. We have collected this circumboreal fern from around the world, and our quest to collect as many accessions as possible continues. Nearby were many patches of the small crevice fern, Asplenium trichomanes, along with a single clone that was truly enormous, unlike anything we’d ever seen.
The area was also filled with Hart’s tongue fern. This fern is typically found in cool summer regions, so finding it in hot, humid climate gives us great hope for plants that will thrive in those conditions. Growing nearby was our first sighting of Pulmonaria vallarsae. Sedum album and Selaginella denticulata also grew among the ferns. My collection of this selaginella from Crete didn’t survive, so I was thrilled to find this at a decent elevation.
We continued climbing the narrow, winding mountain roads until we reached 2840’. He was our first sighting of the common annual, money plant, Lunaria annua, whose seedhead were particularly visible. The most exciting plant at this stop was Sycamore maple, Acer pseudoplatanus. We have found this fails to thrive in NC, due to our heat and humidity, but these genetics should be a game changer. This was our first sighting of another of the rock polypody fern, Polypodium cambricum, along with ubiquitous, fall-flowering woodland sage, Salvia glutinosa in full flower. Our only scarab beetle sighting would also occur here.
As we continued higher to 3000’, we found what at one time, must have been an experimental forest, which now boasted mature specimens of the US West Coast native Chamaecyparis lawsoniana, as well as non-native larch trees. The dominant conifer here was the native white fir, Abies alba, which had these been importable, we would have returned with seedlings, since this should certainly be adaptable to JLBG from this hot, humid site. This was also the first and only time we’d encounter the spiny leguminous, evergreen shrub, gorse (Ulex europaeus).
By now, we were in need of food, more than additional plant discoveries, so we headed back down the mountain, to find a restaurant, which turned out to be a bit of a challenge, since there weren’t any sizeable towns within an hour. Using our “trusted” Google Maps, we were soon 0 for 3, finding each potential dining option closed. Near one of the closed restaurants, we did, however, spot a picture-perfect specimen of the native adult ivy, Hedera helix. We finally hit the culinary jackpot with attempt number four, finding a packed roadside stand in the Il Botteghino region, at a tropical 480’ low elevation. What an absolute gem, we wish had been closer to our hotel.
After lunch, we headed back higher into the mountains on a different route, into the Apuan Alps to the west, stopping first at 1280’ for our 11th site of the trip. Here we found our first plants of Hepatica nobilis, a plant that usually suffers in our heat and humidity, but such would certainly not be the case with plants from this site. Here, we also started seeing more of the bear’s claw lenten rose, Helleborus foetidus. The real surprise here was finding a large rock face, covered with the rare butterwort, Pinguicula mariae, which was just published in 2009.
The southern maidenhair (Adiantum capillus-veneris) fern here, seemed to be a dwarf form, unless the reduced size was simply environmental. Growing nearby was also our first sighting of the tiny, rock garden-sized fern, Asplenium ruta-muraria. On the same rock face, was the dryland, crevice-loving Globularia incanescens, which we successfully cultivate at JLBG. Slightly higher on the bank were stunning 3’ tall specimens of Polystichum setiferum, a plant which also struggles at JLBG, due to our summer heat and humidity. That would certainly not be the case with these genetics.
Our 12th site, and final stop for the day, was an abandoned marble quarry at 2490’ elevation. This fascinating, primarily flat site, was home to an array of dwarf willows and white-barked birches. It was hard to determine if the dwarf nature of the plants here was genetic, or simply due to the rocky, dry nature of the site.
One of the willows was Salix elaeagnos, which grows well at JLBG, but the birch, Betula pendula, typically doesn’t not tolerate heat and humidity. These birch genetics would be an amazing addition to hot, humid climates. A compact, natural bonsai form of Juniperus communis also grew among the birches and willows. The most enchanting rock garden plant at the site was one of the shrub mints, Satureja montana. We tried this from seed over 30 years ago, but the seed never geminated. We will certainly be trying it again, now that we’ve seen it in person.
As the day was drawing to a close, we headed back down to the mountain for a dinner rendezvous with two of our English friends, who’d just arrived in town, Dr. John Grimshaw, editor of Trees and Shrubs On-line, and his partner, Alastair Gunn, head gardener for King Charles at Buckingham Palace. John and Alastair would be accompanying us for the next few days as we continued to explore botanical sites in Italy.
One of many things I love about traveling in Italy for a botanical expedition, is that every hotel is equipped with a Botanically Important Dirt Extracting Tool, known by the acronym, BIDET. This amazing invention is ideal for bare rooting and washing plants, and by Italian law, all hotels in the country must be so equipped…how thoughtful.
Wednesday, Sept 2 – Nursery Time
Our day began by heading east for the one-hour drive to Pistoia. I had read about a couple of small specialty nurseries on-line, so we dropped in along the route, sans appointment. The first was Vivao Rhododendron Nursery, near Lucca, which specializes in both Rhododendron and Camellia. Despite the language barrier, we enjoyed a lovely tour through the garden and nursery. Among the well grown heirloom Italian camellia varieties, was a flowering specimen of the still rare, everblooming, Camellia azalea.
Our second stop of the day was La Casina di San Lorenzo Nursery, also near Lucca. On-line, they boast having over 1200 plant taxa. The nursery staff was busy loading plants for the Murabilia Festival, but we were allowed to wander on our own. The organizational skills and nursery maintenance sadly made it a bit difficult to find much of interest.
From there, we headed further east to the town of Pistoia, considered the center of the European nursery industry. This small town houses over 100 wholesale nurseries. We had arranged to meet one of my on-line plant acquaintances, Frederic Julien of Vannucci Piante, for lunch. Frederic, who goes by the Facebook name of Frederic Yucca, is an amazing French plantsman, who works primarily in France as their regional sales representative. Although we had already scheduled a tour of Vannucci for the next day, Frederic was not available then, hence our lunch meeting.
Although I’d heard of Vannucci Piante prior to our trip, nothing could have prepared me for our lunch stop at the nursery. I’m simply not used to wholesale nurseries having their own restaurants, and certainly not having their own hotel/restaurant combination, that serves customers and visitors at no charge. When I update my book, So, You Think you Want to Start a Nursery, I’ll need to include a chapter on this.
We spent a couple of hours, enjoying the food, and talking plants and plant breeding. Frederic is an incredibly knowledgeable plant breeder, who works with yucca, erythrina, and other eclectic taxa. His first commercial introduction, Yucca ‘French Flag’, a hybrid of two North American native species, Yucca rostrata x filamentosa, is scheduled to arrive in North America next year.
With several hours of daylight remaining after lunch, we headed into a different nearby section of the Apennine Alps. Our first stop at 2150’ elevation was home to two distinct Polypodium ferns. There are three native species in the region, along with interspecific hybrids, each with different sizes and frond emergent times. Here, we found what we think is Polypodium vulgare and Polypodium interjectum. One of the overstory trees at the site, that was new to me is the attractive Italian Downy Oak, Quercus pubescens.
Our final stop for the day was at 2380’ elevation, where the road abruptly and unexpectedly ended. Here we found magnificent specimens of European beech, Fagus sylvatica, in full seed. This is another species that needs new genetics from warmer locations to extend its growable range further south in the US. Also, clinging to the steep bank was the amazing Acer opalus, a little-known, Italian maple. The other breathtaking tree here, which we’d seen scattered throughout the trip was the sweet chestnut, Castanea sativa.
The perennial vegetation on the dry, rocky uplifts, was quite sparse. One plant that did catch my eye, however, was Italian curry, Helichrysum italicum. While John tells us that it’s widely grown in the UK, it seems virtually unknown in US gardens.
With daylight fading, it was time to turn around and head back to Lucca for the evening. By now, we had become accustomed to the extremely narrow, often one lane roads through the Italian mountains, so we didn’t think twice when Google routed us down a very narrow road on a 45-degree slope, where you could literally reach out and shake hands with the neighbors.
Even as a group of women and children pointed at us with concerned looks, we simply waved as we passed…until I noticed that just ahead, the narrow, left turn had switched from a narrow road to a walking path. As we came to a sudden stop, the next-door neighbor, who fortunately spoke a bit of broken English, ran outside shaking his finger. We communicated back by pointing to our cell phone, trying to cast blame away from the idiot tourists. The neighbor was incredibly generous, offering to move his car, and allow us to exit through his driveway, and back to a drivable road. Whew…disaster diverted. I can’t say enough about the friendliness and generosity of the Italian people we’ve encountered.
Thursday, Sept 3 – Enjoya in Pistoia
Thursday morning began with a drive back to Pistoia, with a first stop at Matteini Tranquillo Nursery, owned by husband and wife, Maria Matteini and Tiziano Nesi. They live and work from the 18th century villa on the property, which is certainly one of the more amazing nursery residences/offices I’ve ever encountered.
This “small” 20-acre woody plant nursery, featured an array of plants grown either in the field, or in huge 4’ wide pots, used primarily in landscape projects around Europe. I was surprised to see that red-tipped photinia, Photinia x fraseri is still an important nursery crop here. I was also surprised that Colorado blue spruce, Picea pungens, grew so well here, in what was likely a Zone 9 climate. I was also particularly impressed the columnar black pine, Pinus nigra ‘Green Tower’.
We found a lunch stop nearby, Ristorante Rafanellii, which to our delight, was truly superb, before heading down the road for our tour of Vannucci Piante.
Plantipp (Concept Plants) is a Dutch plant marketing firm, and their Italian representative, Matteo Ragni, had arranged to meet us there, and tour us around with Vannucci Sales Manager, Marco Bussi. To say the nursery was over the top, would be a grand understatement. Many of the plants at the nursery were grown in huge sizes…something rarely seen in the US. Row after of row of plants, being grown in 4’ and 5’ diameter pots were the norm. If there has ever been a nursery that lived the motto “Go big or Go home”, it’s Vannucci.
Nothing Vannuccii sells would be considered rare, but that didn’t mean they weren’t impressive. Their top selling plant genera are: Cupressus, Elaeagnus, Hesperocyparis (Leylands), Photinia, Prunus, and Trachelospermum. At any one time, however, they have 350 taxa in production on their 2347 acres, which has over 55 miles of roads. It was fascinating to learn that the town of Pistoia sits on a huge underground aquifer. In addition to pulling irrigation from lakes, they also have many 75’-100’ deep wells, that each produce a staggering 450 gallons per minute.
Vannuccii fills a huge European demand for mutilated and tortured plant specimens, from clipped spiral and pom poms to braided crape myrtles, which are purchased from growers in China, and finished off in Italy. Their most impressive crop were hundreds of full-size, ancient Japanese bonsai. The Vannucci staff scours Japanese Gardens several times each year, purchasing mature bonsai plants from home gardens in Japan, digging them bare rooted, and transporting them to Vannucci, where they are re-established in giant, open-bottom pots. Once re-established, they are sold around the world for high end projects, in the range of $50,000 Euro each.
The plant loading docks were amazing. Vannucci does not own a transportation fleet, instead relying on common carriers to transport its plant material across the EU, and beyond. Trucks pull into one of several massive loading docks, where plant orders have been assembled. There, the trucks are lowered via hydraulics into a pit, which making loading with a forklift easier. Vannucci’s plant stacking techniques allow them to load the trucks much fuller than many of their competitors.
Something else I’ve never seen is their huge, several acre, high-end greenhouse, where customers can go and see each of their plant offerings in one place.
After our exhaustive tour, we returned to Lucca for a lovely dinner with our friends, Bleddyn and Sue Wynn-Jones of Crug Farms, and UK Garden guru, Rosie Atkins and her husband, Eric. Rosie was the former curator of the Chelsea Physic Garden, and founder of Gardens Illustrated Magazine.
Friday, Sept 4 – Build me a Wall
Before I go any further, I should talk about the Murabilia home base city of Lucca. This Tuscan town, located about one hour from the coast, is known as the walled city. Lucca’s wall project, which is over four miles in length and 90’ thick, was built to keep out undesirables from the nearby, Julius Caesar established, Republic of Florence. The wall project began in 1504, and was completed a mere 144 years later…and you probably thought Trumps’ wall along the Mexican border was taking a long time. The modern Renaissance era wall that exists today actually replaced an earlier Roman wall, from 180 AD. Outside the wall is a waterway, which can be used to flood the area, creating a moat, thereby making it even more difficult for invaders to penetrate.
The current wall is constructed of rocks, bricks, and soil. Today, the top of the wall is home to a massive tree allee, and is used as a walking/jogging trail, and to host public events like the Murabilia Garden Festival.
The wall contains six gates into the city, now used for traffic, and eleven bulwarks, which were designed for defensive military purposes. Naturalized in the cracks of the wall are an array of dryland ferns, and an abundance of capers (Capparis spinosa). Many of the caper plants are well over 50 years of age. Although these are thought to be a Mediterranean native, since they have been grown here so long, it turns out that they may actually have an Asian origin.
Lucca features and array of Medieval, Romanesque, and Renaissance architecture. I’m not going to pretend that I have any idea what these buildings are, but I know that they are darn old. The late composer/opera maven, Giacomo Puccini ( La bohème (1896), Tosca (1900), and Madama Butterfly (1904), is a Lucca native, so he is honored throughout the city.
Today is the first day of the Murabilia Festival, which is held on top of the giant wall. Our day began at 9am as we met the rest of the expert judging teams, which came from around the world. The judging was quite different from anything which I’d been involved in before. Our task was to judge the nursery booths who were vending at the show. The judging was divided into three teams; one for woody plants, one for perennial plants, and one for house plants. The problem was that many of the vendors sold more than one category of plant, so deciding which category a nursery belonged was at best random.
The judging took over four hours, primarily because it involved quite a bit of socializing with the vendors, who were strangely, able to be present, and converse with the judges…something that would never be allowed in the US. Our judging panel for perennials, consisted of Sue Wynn-Jones of Crug Farms in Wales, Rosie Atkinson of the UK, and Razvan Chisu, a Transylvania native, and now Social Media specialist for the Trees and Shrubs On-line project.
As the temperature rose to 94 degrees with 70% humidity, the need for moisture breaks rose significantly. Then, we had to stop mid-judging, for a long-winded introduction to the festival, by everyone who was even remotely involved with the show. As it turns out, it’s quite common in Italy, for everyone involved in a project to be given their two minutes of fame, to drone on about the event.
Instead of hot tub booths like in the US, non-plant booths were selling food stuffs, including a staggering array of cheeses, locally cured meats, pizza, and of course, plenty of alcohol. Unlike in the US, when you order coffee, here, the cup comes with only ½” of liquid. Although I didn’t indulge, a full cup of this is reportedly able to propel you into orbit as high as Elon’s Starlink satellites.
Plant booths ranged from those selling house plants that your would find in a US box store, to rare treasures for the keenest plant collector. I particularly enjoyed chatting, despite the language barrier, with several specialty nurseryman, including Slovenia nurseryman, Gorazd Mauer of Rifnik Garden and Plants, who was selling an array of rare treasures, that included three of our PDN/JLBG introductions, Gloxinia ‘Evita’ Gloxinia ‘Little Red’, and Spigelia marilandica ‘Little Redhead’.
Benjamin and Najwa de Ladoucette of the French nursery, Les Pepinieres Bellet de Ladoucette, have botanized around the world, and had a both of plant treasures that even the most keen collector would lust for. My most lustful find at their booth is Fatsia japonica ‘Tengu Nishiki’.
A few of the more unusual plants encountered in the show included Atriplex hymenolytra from the Southwest US, a dwarf Asian poison ivy (Toxicodendron) from Taiwan, and a dwarf Bougainvillea ‘Mini Thai’.
I found it quite humorous that pedestrian barricades at the show were all labeled as New Jersey barriers, an unofficial term, first coined in 1955 by NJ residents for the multitude of concrete barriers that occupied the state during times of road construction. I’m sure there’s a fascinating story how this term became the brand name of barriers in Italy.
Saturday, Sept 5 – Murabilia, a Celebration of Plants and People
The festival ran from 10-7 daily, but there still wasn’t adequate time for me to visit with all of the vendors. Saturday was also a solid day of plant presentations at the show, all scheduled back-to-back without any scheduled breaks. Each talk was by a world renown garden authority, so even taking a bathroom break meant missing something meaningful. While the talks were all presented in English, Italian doctor and plantsman Alberto Grossi, kindly served as translator. By the end of the talks my plant desiderata list had grown significantly.
The array of international speakers and attendees was extra- ordinary. This was an invaluable opportunity to reconnect with old plant friends, meet new ones, and meet in person, plant friends who I’d previously only known on-line. It was especially great to finally meet the amazing Italian plantsman, Angello Porcelli, with whom we’d been chatting with on-line and swapping plants for decades. One of Angelo’s recent hybrids, a cross of Arum creticum x Arum palaestinum, has just been named in his honor.
It was also great to meet Abraham Rammeloo, the director of Belgium’s Arboretum Kalmthout, a garden I’d wanted to visit for decades. I had a blast chatting with keen plantsman, Razvan Chisu, a UK resident, who immigrated there from his native Transylvania. Razvan lectures around the world, as well assisting with the Trees and Shrubs On-line project. Another plant friend that I hadn’t seen in many years, was French plantsman and plant explorer, Olivier Colin, so I was thrilled to catch up with him.
Murabilia offered the chance to meet so many new people, it was hard to keep track of them all. An unexpected awards ceremony at the festival, not only left me with another plaque, but more importantly, allowed me to meet the other recipient, the amazing Anna Zegna, of the Internationally renowned Zegna fashion empire. Anna, the former President of Zegna Fashions, now leads her family’s’ non-profit effort to maintain and restore a 24,000 natural area, Oasi Zegna, for public use, about 3.5 hours north. Perhaps a future botanizing trip is in order.
Sunday, Sept 6 – Back into the Field
Sunday morning, we snuck out of the show to return to the Apuan Alps, this time with John Grimshaw, and Alastair Gunn, in tow. Our first stop, just over an hour north of town, was just past the town of Massa at 1250’ elevation. We had hoped to climb higher to reach a potential Ruscus site, but the road ended unexpectedly, where the asphalt turned into a walking path of crushed shale. Parking in a small lot at the end of the road, we couldn’t help but notice the fascinating graffiti mural, obviously of a young man, recalling his amorous evening adventure, while parked at the roadhead.
We wandered around the steep, dry bank, which was on rain shadow side of the mountain, studying the adapted flora. The dry riverbed beneath us, told tales of massive floods, when the water from the mountains above roared below, enough to fill the massive channel. Growing In the gravel just beneath the path was a significant patch of butterfly bush, almost certainly what is known as Buddleia davidii var. nanhoensis. There must be a fascinating story how this got so far from its native China, and so far from any homes.
On the steep slope to our north, the 3’ wide patches of Globularia sp. were outstanding, and still clinging to a few seed. Even the Scabiosa sp. patches here still had some remaining flowers, despite these harsh conditions.
After a brief stop below Massa, we climbed our way nearly three times as high, into the coastal mountains near Sera Veza, where we finally stopped at 3380’ elevation. This was an amazing botanical site, with masses of Hepatica nobilis, Asarum europaeum, a very narrow-leaf form of Helleborus foetidus, Geranium nodosum, a nice patch of Polypodium vulgare, and the terrestrial orchid, Epipactus helleborine, still in seed. A plant with great garden potential, that I’d fallen for a few days earlier, Epilobium angustifolium, was also here, but this time, in full flower. This circumpolar species is one we’d tried previously from seed, but with no germination. From this elevation, it should perform well for us at JLBG.
We realized that lunchtime was upon us, and as luck would have it, we spotted a restaurant across the street, barely visible through a small patch of woods. The LeGobbie restaurant turned out to be another amazing culinary discovery that we can highly recommend, if you find yourself in the Apuan Alps.
By the time we finished lunch we were well into the afternoon, with only time for one more botanizing stop before we left Italy. We chose to take John and Alastair to the Pinguicula site we’d discovered a few days earlier, so off we went, still keeping our eyes peeled for the Ruscus taxa we’d yet to run across. We continued down the mountain, retracing our steps back to the original site we’d visited at 1280’ elevation.
After admiring the butterworts, and as we were preparing to depart, we noticed a side path along a dry rocky waterway that we’d missed earlier, since it was nearly obscured by a mass of impenetrable brambles. Almost immediately, Zac noticed Solomon’s Seal, Polygonatum multiflorum growing here…a first for our trip. The more we looked, the more we found.
As we hiked deeper into the forest, we started finding Ruscus aculeatus, growing near Euonymus europaeus, and huge clumps of Asplenium scolopendrium, perched on the cliffs, high above our heads. Before long, I heard calls of “We found it” from further down the rocky valley. Although I had visualized finding hybrid Ruscus at the start of the day, the heat and humidity made me first assume I was hallucinating.
As I scrambled over the large rocks in the dry stream bank to finally catch up with John, Allistair, and Zac, I finally realized that they had indeed found both Ruscus hypoglossum, and the intermediate hybrid between it and Ruscus aculeatus. The first plants were perched so high on a near vertical cliff that reaching them for good photographs was difficult. This hybrid is so poorly known that it’s yet to be officially named, so let’s give it the unpublished moniker, Ruscus x aculoglossum. As we continued further up the channel, more accessible plants appeared, allowing us to study them closer.
As the remaining daylight continued to dwindle, we turned around and hiked back toward the road, climbing over the massive, slippery boulders. As we did, even more amazing ferns appeared. One was an incredibly huge polypody fern, that we’re pretty sure is the natural hybrid, Polypodium x mantoniae, and other is Gymnocarpium robertianum, a fern that’s also native to North America. The North American material, however, isn’t heat tolerant, so these are the genetics we need for it to be growable here. Unfortunately, the fronds that I was carrying back to the car, were mistakenly laid down to take pictures, so this will need to be added to my lust list for the future. If we hadn’t had to get our collections cleaned and ready for the Agricultural Inspection office the next day, we would have spent much longer at this amazing site.
Monday, Sept 7 – Ferrying Away
We departed Lucca on Monday morning for the Corsica ferry crossing, one hour west of Lucca, in Livorno. Since we’d been having trouble receiving replies from the Regional Agricultural Inspection Service in Pisa, we thought it was best to pay them a surprise visit in person. We arrived around 9am, and being unable to read Italian, we didn’t realize they had a reserved parking area, so we paid for street parking a block away. Although the office building itself was quite drab on the outside, the adjacent pond of lotus, fed by city effluent was quite stunning.
The receptionist told us that none of the inspectors were available, but just as we were preparing to depart, Nella Fofana, the Head of Inspections for the region with whom we’d been emailing, showed up. After a short meeting, she assured us that, since she would not be in the office when we returned, one of her inspectors would be available to issue the phyto. With that assurance in hand, we were ready to continue to the ferry departure point, an hour away, for our 2pm ferry reservation.
With a bit of spare time in hand, we first opted to swing by the famed Leaning Tower of Pisa, which was less than a mile from the Inspection Office. We quickly noticed that downtown Pisa is much more chaotic than downtown Lucca. Not only were there more people, but the parking situation was horrific. If there were parking decks, we certainly couldn’t read the signs to find them. Also, the number of motorcycles and miniature vehicles in downtown Pisa was staggering. You could tell that Pisa was more of a foreign tourist city, both by the tour trains and the shady street vendors, selling jewelry and watches.
After the obligatory photos, we were quickly off on our one-hour drive to the ferry terminal in Livorno. We had selected Corsica Ferries, the larger of the two ferry companies that ran these 4.5-hour routes from Italy to Bastia, Corsica. We grabbed a quick lunch near the ferry terminal, adjacent to the famous 17th century Four Moors statue, then off to the ferry. We thought we’d allowed enough time to get in the ferry line for our 2pm departure, only to find that the directional signage was less than ideal. Despite being told by the ferry gate traffic director to take two consecutive right turns, which we did, we found ourselves back on the highway, heading away from the ferry. Turning around for a second try, we found that the left-hand turn, after the two right hand turns, were the missing part of the directions. We finally found the correct cue for loading, but with only 30 minutes to spare.
Today, this route was serviced by the smaller of the Corsica Ferries, which, when full, held 600 vehicles. Fortunately, for our trip, they only had about ½ that number of vehicles. As I had only traveled on smaller ferries, it was a new experience being on a ferry with many of the luxuries of a cruise ship, including cabins, and a series of sit-down restaurants and lounges. Unlike the ferries I’d ridden before, you were not allowed to remain in your vehicle.
By 6:30pm, we neared the end of our journey across the calm Tyrrhenian Sea, as we arrived into the town of Bastia, on the French island of Corsica. The island of Corsica is 115 miles long and 52 miles wide, so you could drive tip to tip in just over three hours. After disembarking, it was an easy, but crowded ten-minute drive to our destination, the nearby Sud Hotel.
Tuesday, Sept 8 – Corsican Adventure
Since our time on Corsica was limited, we chose to take the cross-island highway from the northeast part of the island where we landed, to the town of Ajaccio, in the far southwestern corner. Driving directly there would have taken us only 2.5 hours, so this allowed plenty of time for botanizing stops.
As we rose from coastal elevations, our first stop was about 1.5 hours from Livorno in the Natural area, Vallei de Restonica. Here, at 1500’ elevation, we made our first sighting of the Corsican endemic, Helleborus argutifolius. At this site were also three ferns, Asplenium adiantum-nigrum, more Asplenium onopteris, and huge patches of royal fern, Osmunda regalis, along the massive rocky stream at the bottom of the steep hill. On the dry, sunny side of the road were numerous patches of Spanish Lavender, Lavandula stoechas.
We continued up the same narrow, winding mountain, until we reached 3000’ elevation. Because of my acrophobia and the lack of any road guardrails, we chose not to drive higher. Here, on the incredibly rocky steep hillsides were more ferns, most of which we’d seen before. The Asplenium onopteris here has the most cut foliage of any we’d seen previously. The area was also filled with heathers, some often growing alongside the dormant Asphodelus ramosus. Euphorbia characias, which we grow at JLBG, was also here, but certainly not plentiful. Among the dry, sunbaked rocks was also quite a bit of Teucrium marum, aka: kitty crack. To my nose, it smelled a bit different to the material we sell. The only one of several Corsican saxifrages we found, is what I think is probably Saxifraga pedemontana subsp. cervicornis. Here, plants of Quercus ilex, which we’d seen earlier in Italy, looked simply stunning among the large boulders.
From here, we headed back down the mountain, making our next stop at 2890’, when we spotted a different species of Asphodelus, with much smaller seed pods. The dormant foliage was just starting to resprout for fall. Thanks to Zac’s great eyes, we also found the white-flowered amaryllid, Pancratium Illyricum, growing among the Asphodelus. If we’d been a month later, this spring-flowering species would most likely be littering the hills with foliage. The dominant tree species here is the giant Corsican pine, Pinus nigra var. laricio, with it’s beautiful bark.
I had begun to tire from overheating, which I attributed to my advancing age, until we hopped back in the rental car and saw that the outside temperature had reached 42 degrees C (107 degrees F), and that’s not counting the added humidity.
Our final stop in the Vallie de Restonica was at 1680’, where we found the giant fennel, Ferula communis with ripe seed. Also, here, we found the dryland juniper, Juniperus oxycedrus in a reproductive state. From here, we headed back to the main cross island highway, the S20, and proceeded further south. We soon spotted an interesting site, and pulled off the highway, to find a virtual forest of Ruscus aculeatus. Most of the plants here were in the 4-5’ range, with a few in fruit.
Shortly after this site, we took another side road back into the higher mountains. The habit was very similar to the Vallie de Restonica, but without the multitude of hikers and cyclists. Our final stop for day, at 2040’, yielded a new fern, that we assume to be Dryopteris affinis, and our first Corsican sighting of Selaginella denticulata. The soft shield fern, Polystichum setiferum also grows here, and this form should have no problem tolerating heat and humidity. We also found splendid specimens of the little-grown Daphne gnidium, in both flower and fruit. The tree that had me fascinated throughout the trip was the ash, Fraxinus ornus, which in Italy had green foliage, but on Corsica, all the plants had splendidly silver foliage. This absolutely needs to be introduced into cultivation.
As we headed south toward our hotel, we pulled off the road, after spotting what appeared to be an ancient ruin, atop an isolated mountain peak. It turned out to be an abandoned 18th century prison, Fort de Pasciola, run by one of Napoleon’s henchmen, Joseph Morand, to keep political insurgents locked away. It is now a public visitation site, complete with hiking trails.
Wednesday, Sept 9 – Corsican Wrap-up
Today is our final day in Corsica, so we arose early to retrace our steps back from the Southwest part of the island to the Northeast ferry port. Yesterday, we noticed some greener areas toward the higher peaks, so this would be our focus for the day.
Our first stop of the day at 2900’ was amazing, where we found a moist vertical cliff. This area contained at least five different ferns, along with flowering plants of the Gentiana asclepiadea that we’d seen in the Apuan Alps, complete with a single ripe capsule of seed. Commercial material of this species is most likely from colder regions, which is why it’s performed so poorly for us in the past. This was also our first sighting of the rare perennial Cymbalaria hepaticifolia, but sadly, it was too late to add this to our phyto list. The columbine, Aquilegia sp. had beautiful silver markings. The oddest thing at this site was a dense, groundcover iris-looking plant, that didn’t seem to match anything known from the island. Spores were gathered here of many of the same ferns we found in Italy, to compare their performance in cultivation.
Our next stop was slightly lower in elevation, at a parking lot for Col de Vizzavona hikers, where we marveled at the diversity of the leaf shapes of the English holly, Ilex aquifolium. This is a plant which typically doesn’t thrive in heat, but I’m betting these genetics would thrive. Unfortunately, seed were still months away from being ripe. The European beech, Fagus sylvatica here, should also have good heat tolerance. This site also provided some of the most incredible populations of flowering Cyclamen hederifolium that we’d seen on the trip. Nearby, a splendid specimen of the fern, Polypodium cambricum, glowed on a bank along the highway.
Our next stop was at 2750’ elevation, when Zac spotted the native Cercis siliquastrum in full seed. Adjacent was also more Acer pseudoplatanus in seed, like we’d seen in Italy, so it will be interesting to see how this form thrives in the heat and humidity of North Carolina. On the adjacent bank was our first sighting of Colchicums in flower on Corsica. We’re unsure of the species, but this seems to be Colchicum nanum. Below it on the bank was a lovely dwarf Lathyrus species, with very narrow foliage and hot pink flowers.
Our final stop for the day was to actually take a photo of the red blinking deer signs along the highway, which obviously signaled that Rudolph was on his way, sleigh in tow. What initially looked like an uninteresting bank, turned out to be a botanical treasure trove of dryland plants. Here, we found flowering plants of Bupleurum fruticosum, which was on Zac’s desiderata list. Sadly, there were no ripe seeds. We also found our first plants of Arbutus unedo with ripe fruit, which typically doesn’t happen until late fall and winter. On a very steep bank, were several clumps of an amazing oregano, Origanum sp., that had just finished flowering, all with amazingly dark purple foliage. Sadly, it was too late to add these to our phytosanitary certificate. Same was the case with the large clump of Asparagus at the top of the bank and lovely, perennial Eryngium campestre, that Zac spotted near the bottom.
We cut the day a bit shorter than normal, as we both needed to work on our final paperwork and seed cleaning before tomorrow’s plant inspections, back in Pisa. After returning to the SUD hotel, we got busy with our final cleaning and paperwork. Once we were finished, we made our way down to the coast, and while watching our ferry arrive into port, spotted amazing patches of the edible rock samphire, Crithmum maritimum. Surprisingly, this Mediterranean native thrives for us at JLBG.
After spending an hour trying to find a new dinner stop for the evening, only to find dozens of closed restaurants, we relented and returned to the Sud Hotel restaurant to rejoin our furry meal companion, and say our goodbyes to Corsica.
Thursday, Sept 10 – Those Pesky Details
Today is where the focus shifts from field work to paperwork, that makes all the fieldwork worthwhile. We departed the Sud Hotel before dawn for the nearby ferry terminal. Compared to our trip coming to Corsica, the signage was slightly less confusing. This time the ferry was nearly 1/3 larger, and was carrying a huge number of tractor trailers back to Italy. Because we boarded early for the 8am departure, we got to enjoy both breakfast and lunch aboard the ferry. Our only suggestion for improving the experience is to have more than a single cashier for a line of 80 people trying to pay for their meals, prior to eating. The long trip also provided a first opportunity to start labeling my 1000 images from the expedition.
The next piece of the puzzle was the one-hour drive south to the Pisa Agricultural Inspection Service in Pisa. Since we had scoped it out before we left Italy, it was much easier to make our way back, and meet the waiting inspector. In advance, we had to send a complete list of plants, along with the number of each.
The entire process took less than an hour, and we were on our way to find a copy center to print off all the import permits, plant lists, a proforma invoice, an original phytosanitary certificate, along with the green/yellow USDA shipping labels. Finding a parking place in downtown Pisa is at best a challenge, which would probably have been somewhat easier if we could read Italian. The oddest part of this journey was seeing a portrait of American Uni-bomber, Ted Kaczynski, on a downtown wall…hmm.
After finishing at the copy center, we then needed to find a shipper for the plants. We located one in downtown Pisa, but after spending far too much time going around in widening circles in search of parking, we shifted to plan 2, which was to head for a large International FedEx hub near the Pisa airport. We were thrilled to find plenty of parking, so, in we went with our packages. As so many things that seem too good to be true, we were told that they don’t accept packages unless you are a registered international shipper. The worker there, directed us the same business, Mail Boxes Etcetera (MBE), that we had tried in downtown Pisa. Since we were now approaching 4:45pm, and most of the MBE offices closed at 6pm, so our situation was getting dire.
We knew that Pisa would most likely be even worse than earlier, in terms of finding parking, so we opted to head back to Florence, where our morning flight was departing, in the hopes we could make it to the MBE office there, before they closed. Fortunately, the main highway between Pisa and Florence had speed limits between 70 and 80 mph, which bizarrely changed, seemingly every mile. Google navigation landed us at the store with 12 minutes to spare, but then we had to find a parking spot. Finally, we located a single parking spot about four blocks away, in which we literally squeezed into, and then ran, packages in hand to the MBE office, finally walking into the office with four minutes to spare. This was to subsequently find out that this office actually stayed open until 6:50pm.
After chatting with the sales rep, we were informed that FedEx didn’t ship plants overseas. Did we say plants…sorry, we meant botanical specimens. It took several minutes, and a back-and-forth phone conversation with his boss, before they agreed to ship our box, but with no responsibility on their part if something died during shipment. After an hour, we were finished, and ready to drop off our luggage at our hotel, then head to the airport to drop off our rental car, for which we were now more than an hour late.
The Best Western hotel near the Florence airport turned out to be our nicest hotel of the trip. We dropped off our rental car, only to find the rental office closed, just as the last few minutes of daylight were fading. Then, it was how to find a taxi back to the hotel. Fortunately, Zac found someone nearby, who spoke enough English to suggest, and direct us to the airport shuttle departure point, which would take us back to the airport taxi stand. We thought our excitement for the day was over until we hopped into a cab with very angry gentleman of Middle Eastern descent. He sped back to our hotel like a lunatic, going the wrong way around roundabouts, ignoring all traffic signs, and then was furious that we wanted to pay with credit card, at first, demanding only cash. We were both quite relieved to get out of that episode alive. That led to a very quiet dinner…our last together, before a very early morning departure home.
Should the opportunity and funding arise, I would certainly return for more exploration in what was a botanically fascinating part of the world.
– Tony Avent