The Botanical Garden -
by Michela Arfiero
by Michela Arfiero
Planted in the Garden four hundred and forty years ago, in 1585, the dwarf palm Chamaerops humilis—popularly known as the Saint Peter’s Palm—was later renamed and is now known as Goethe’s Palm, after its encounter with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in 1786.
It is the only native European species to have survived the glaciations, and one of the oldest organisms in the Botanical Garden of Padua. Observing the already two-hundred-year-old palm, Goethe was struck by the changing shapes of its leaves and perceived, in their structure, the outline of a transformation. Before that natural metamorphosis arose the evolutionary intuition he would later develop in the Essay on the Metamorphosis of Plants (1790), where he hypothesized that all plant forms derived from a single “original plant.” In 2025, the results of the first high-quality, chromosome-level genomic sequencing of Goethe’s Palm were published in Scientific Data. Numerous repeated sequences were identified in its DNA: traces of ancient adaptations. The assembled genome also shows a clear link between the plant and populations of the western Mediterranean.
It is considered the archetype of all modern botanical gardens.
Born as a “garden of simples”—dedicated to the study and cultivation of medicinal plants—it takes its name from the “simples,” plants in their natural form, the basis of every medical preparation. Founded in 1545 as the Horto medicinale, the first university garden in the world, the Botanical Garden of Padua is the oldest to have preserved its original structure: a microcosm of natural knowledge, built according to Renaissance principles.
With a circular layout—symbol of the world—surrounded by a small ring of water; at the center, a square divided by four orthogonal paths, each oriented toward a cardinal point.
Here dwell large centuries-old plants that recount a long history of resistance and acclimatization: the Platanus orientalisfrom 1680, the eighteenth-century Ginkgo biloba (a remnant of geological eras), the Magnolia grandiflora from 1786, and the first Himalayan cedar introduced into Italy, in 1822.