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 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.
The next morning, 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.
Growing nearby was the holly-leaf oak, Quercus ilex, which was incredibly variable in leaf shape, size, and form. Both of these oak species should grow well in Raleigh, although plants from the genus, Quercus, are currently not allowed to be imported into the US.
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.
Thank you for the botanizing tour. What an incredible adventure.
An amazing experience to share through your eyes. Thank you.
Thank you so much for taking time to read our expedtion diary.
Interesting trip. My late parents were both born in Italy, and they never talked favorably on the summer climate of Sicily or summer and winter in the Po Valley of the north. Quercus suber seems to grow fine in Belen NM and here in Las Cruces at the university, which I think the plants were from growers in California? So not seed freom native populations.