The Path of Pietro Zangheri

Pietro Zangheri was born in Forli on 23 July 1889.

Seventeen years old, at the beginning of the century, he began the first botanical observations in the surroundings of his city. After the war he won the competition to run the Nursing Home in Forli, where he remained throughout his working life. Thanks also to donations, he transformed the old shelter into a complex of a hundred beds, with a house-hotel for the lonely elderly who could take their furniture from home, a hospital-type ward, coffee with billiards, a theatre, a gym. In the garden, he planted many plants that have become imposing over time: all with a cartouche that indicated the scientific name. The Nursing Home took then its name.

A life lived almost entirely in Forli and dedicated, with exclusive passion, to the systematic exploration of Romagna. During more than forty years of scientific research, barely disturbed by the roar of two world wars, Zangheri made countless excursions, from coastal pine forests to the forests of the upper Apennines, observing, photographing and accumulating thousands of specimens: plants, animals, fossils, rocks, minerals, paleontological finds. A true naturalist, the Romagna scientist devoted himself to a limited but total exploration: he studied and wrote mainly about flora and vegetation, but also about fauna, geology, mycology, physical geography, pedology, climatology.

Such an extraordinary undertaking if you consider that Zangheri is a self-taught man. A certified accountant, he ran a retirement home in his hometown for many years. An amateur “in the positive sense of the term”, soon known and appreciated by the leading representatives of the Italian and international scientific community with whom he has a dense correspondence. Among his masters, Zangheri mentioned the botanists Giovanni Negri, Alberto Chiarugi and Raffaele Ciferri and the entomologist Mario Bezzi. It was precisely the latter, convinced of Zangheri’s vocation for “seriously conducted” naturalistic exploration , who advised him to “direct it to the collection not limited but extended to the floral-faunal fields” as long as – Zangheri recalls – “I was aware of the assiduous and long work that the commitment entailed to bring it, over time, to a satisfactory outcome”.

“I am the man of the quarters of an hour,” he then replied to those who asked him how he found the time for his research. Quarter of an hour after quarter of an hour, he signed about two hundred publications.

In 1956 he obtained free teaching in geobotany. There were also numerous official awards and recognitions.

Eighty years old, judged to have concluded the exploration of Romagna, he dedicated himself to the compilation of the “Flora italica” which ended in 1976. On 10 October 1977 in Verona, during the annual congress of Italian botanists, he received a copy of the “Flora Italica” with the signatures of all the present scientists, as a sign of affectionate homage and gratitude. It is the last time he appeared in public. He then retired to Padua with his son Sergio and died there on 25 February 1983.

On his ex-libris, in the space left free by a small natural universe of plants and animals, stands a verse by Virgil “Sic itur ad astra”. Among the main volumes written by Zangheri we must mention the five volumes of the “Romagna fitogeografica” (Romagna phytogeografica), published between 1936 and 1966 and covering as many areas from the Pine forests to the Upper Romagna Apennines; the recently reprinted book “La Provincia di Forli nei suoi aspetti naturali” (The Province of Forli in its natural aspects), one of the most complete works dedicated to the illustration of a territory; the manual “Naturalista esploratore, raccoglitore, preparatore”(Naturalist explorer, collector, preparer), Zangheri’s greatest editorial success published in 6 editions and still present in the catalogues of the Hoepli. The “Repertorio sistematico e topografico della flora e fauna vivente e fossile della Romagna” (Systematic and topographical repertoire of living and fossil flora and fauna of Romagna), which with its five volumes of a total of 2174 pages constitutes the sum of his exploration of Romagna and the completion of the project started 50 years earlier. The last of the volumes of the Repertory was published in 1970 when Pietro Zangheri was about 80 years old.

Pietro Zangheri was buried in the family tomb, which he had built during the last years of his life, in the cemetery of Dovadola. He liked the cypress trees that surrounded our cemetery and represented an aspect of the Romagna landscape that was changing.
He had been able to observe them every time he walked along SS 67 when he went to Florence to the Botanical Institute of the University. On the sepoicral tombstone it was rightly and simply written: “Pietro Zangheri Naturalista” (Naturalist). Next to him rests his wife Maria Ragazzini.