There is a corner of Tuscany which was relatively unknown from a naturalistic point of view until a short time ago, namely Montalbano which was also the birthplace of Leonardo da Vinci, one of the greatest geniuses of the Renaissance who included this landscape and flora in a number of his tables and drawings. Lorenzo Peruzzi, a researcher from the Department of Biology at the University of Pisa and the keen botanist Giovanni Gestri studied the territory for the first time and the outcome was a book, "I fiori di Leonardo – La flora vascolare del Montalbano in Toscana"(published by Aracne, 2013), which, as well as studying the flora of the area, also offers a comparison between recent photos of some plants and the drawings by Leonardo da Vinci.
"Such a stimulating territory, so rich from a naturalistic point of view, could not remain unexplored as would appear to have been the case from the scarcity of information about the flora available in literature," explained Lorenzo Peruzzi, "and not by chance, in the course of our research, we found many of the plants in Leonardo da Vinci's still-life drawings depicted with such an eye for detail that belongs only to the true 'botanist', so much so, that we were surprised by the comparison between our photos and his drawings.
The research in Montalbano was carried out over a five-year period from 2008 to 2012, and brought to light the marked plant diversity: more than 1,400 species, equal to about a third of all the flora in Tuscany, a number of which are of great botanical interest both in the phytogeographical and conservationistic fields.
"In many ways, also unexpectedly," concluded the researcher from the University of Pisa, "Montalbano can therefore be deemed one of the most interesting areas in Tuscany from a botanical, historical and scenic point of view in no less a manner than other more well-known and well-studied areas such as the Apuan Alps and Monte Pisano."