Behind this ancient sundial, shielded by a greenhouse, we see a palm tree with an interesting, nay fascinating story.

First of all, it’s the oldest tree in the garden, planted in 1585.

Secondly, it belongs to the only spontaneous palm species in Italy! You can find it in Sicily and Sardinia, more rarely along the Tuscan, Lazio and Campania coasts.

Looking at it, you’d never know it doesn’t grow much in nature. It’s actually a fan palm, its scientific name Chamaerops humilis means “humble little bush”. This specimen is a whopping 12 metres high, so not really a “humble little bush” at all! How did that happen? We pampered it right from the beginning and it has always lived in a greenhouse.

We call it “Goethe’s Palm” because it’s so incredible it even entranced Johann Wolfgang Goethe during his tour of Italy, when he visited Padua on 27th September, 1786. Once again, at that time our garden was part of a new wave of how to study nature. Goethe observed the palm and focused on the appearance of the leaves. If you look from the bottom up, you will notice that some leaves have a simple, elongated shape: they are the youngest. The older leaves are fan-shaped like the fingers of an open hand. So during its life cycle the palm will show different forms not only for the stem, but also the leaves.

This observation led Goethe to formulate the idea that plants are made up of anatomical forms coming from a single primordial element, which he thought was the leaf. In a series of transformations the element generates different structures for the plant.

Just think that from his observations on nature, Goethe was able to create an outright method of anatomical comparison to which he gave the name of morphology.