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MICHELE LOJACONO-POJERO’S CENTURIAE IN THE HERBARIA
AND ARCHIVES IN GENEVA
Mariam AGHABABYAN, Werner GREUTER & Francesco Maria RAIMONDO
Dipartimento di Scienze Botaniche dell’Università, I-90123 Palermo; m_agababian@hotmail.com;
w.greuter@bgbm.org; raimondo@unipa.it
Michele Lojacono Pojero, author of a five-tomes “Flora Sicula”, is less famous among
Sicilian botanists than he deserves. Little is known of his birth (in Palermo in 1848 or 1853),
life, death (in Messina, some time in 1919) and botanical activities. His botanical mentor was
Agostino Todaro. For a lifetime, he collected and studied the flora of Sicily and its
surrounding islets. His botanical writings started in 1878 with a clover monograph and a
botanical survey of the Eolie Islands.
In the archives of the Geneva Conservatoire Botanique, 64 unpublished letters by Lojacono to
Boissier (7), Barbey (4), Briquet (3), Burnat (34), and other Geneva botanists (16) are
conserved. The first, of October 1878, was addressed to Boissier, whose reply (unknown) may
well have triggered the prepation and sale of Lojacono’s exsiccata of rare and imperfectly
known plants of his home country.
The Geneva library and archives also hold various lists of Lojacono’s exsiccata. Between
1879 and 1884 Lojacono distributed 7 Centuriae of Plantae Siculae Rariores, numbered I
toVII. In 1885 he started a second series, Plantae Italicae Selectae, of which the 4 th ,
apparently last Centuria was ready in 1888. The corresponding lists are autographic
(handwritten lithographed) documents, except for the first Centuria of Plantae Italicae, which
was set in type. We found no copy of Centuria II of Plantae Italicae; but at least one edition
(there must have been various) of all other lists, of 1000 numbers in total, are present. They
are here presented in transcribed form.
The herbaria in Geneva (Burnat Herbarium, kept separate; Barbey-Boissier Herbarium,
merged in the general herbarium) include two sets of Lojacono exsiccata. Examples were
verified; type material of some of Lojacono’s own new species (Cirsium vallis-demonis,
Anthemis ismelia, Centaurea aeolica) has been traced.
Keywords: Lojacono Pojero, Flora, Sicily, Italy, Exsiccata, Centuriae, types.
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