Giulio Pontedera

Giulio Pontedera (1688 to 1757) was an Italian botanist of Tuscan origin who was professor of botany at Padua and director of its botanical garden. Although he rejected the system of Carl Linnaeus, Linnaeus corresponded with him and named the genus Pontederia after him. Born at Lonigo near Vicenza into a family of Pisan origin settled in the Republic of Venice, he took his degree at the University of Padua in 1715 and was first a pupil and then a respected colleague of Giovanni Battista Morgagni. His first important botanical work appeared in 1718, and a year later he was appointed university teacher of botany and prefetto of the Botanical Garden. He called his predecessor Felice Viali the second father of the garden, after Francesco Bonafede, since Viali had reorganised its architecture. The plant collection had been depleted, and when Pontedera took over he found only 530 plants, 130 of them in pots. The head gardener Tommaso Andreola and his son Santo, who had strong political backing, ignored orders, and sold off plants and tools while he was away on plant-finding trips.