A manuscript preserved alongside the sheets of an herbarium that can be traced back to the ancient Materia Medica School at the University of Siena, titled “Alphabetical Index of the Common names of Plants collected in the Herbarium divided into 5 categories”, describes – briefly but with proper methodology – a sort of journey through the plants in the Siena countryside in mid-nineteenth century.
Despite the fact that the herbaria are synthetic compendia of botanical and medical knowledge, detouring occasionally into arts, thought to guide doctors and students through medicinal plants and their therapeutic properties, our “Index” is able to lead us out from the “Orto dei Semplici”, the herb garden where medicinal plants were selected and grown to serve the pharmacy. It reveals to be a punctual description of the rural environment nearby Siena. A journey that closely resembles what the German botanist Leopold Eger suggested in his “Der Naturalien-Sammler: praktische Anleitung zum Sammeln, Praparien, Konserviren organischer und unorganischer Naturkorper” manual, translated into Italian in 1877.
A “botanical journey” – that each student of Materia Medica School was required to do – would enable him to acquire the basic knowledge for recognizing the herbs and plants of its territory, for knowing where they could be collected, their vulgar names and everyday use by common people.