In 2025 we celebrate the 150th anniversary of the birth of Augusto Béguinot, a distinguished botanist and academic. Born in Paliano (FR) on October 17, 1875, he was a leading figure in Italian botany in the early 20th century. He studied Natural Sciences at the University of Rome under Pietro Romualdo Pirotta, graduating in 1898 with a thesis on the genus Romulea. During these years, Béguinot began a long series of botanical explorations throughout the Lazio region and several Tyrrhenian islands, supported by Giacomo Doria (1840–1913), a key patron of naturalists at the time. Ha opened his academic career in Padua, and later. he held the chair of botany in Sassari, Messina, Modena, and finally Genoa, where he passed away in 1940. Béguinot was a member and president of numerous scientific academies and societies, receiving several prestigious national and international awards.
His scientific output includes nearly 300 publications, covering a wide range of topics—from floristics to systematics, from plant biology to genetics, with significant contributions also in phytogeography, ecology, anatomy, morphology, and the history of botany. Béguinot collaborated on major works such as the Flora Analitica d’Italia and the Flora Italica Exsiccata, helping to classify and document Italian plant life.
Many of the specimens Béguinot collected during his explorations in Lazio are now preserved in the Sapienza Herbarium Museum. These samples provide rare insights into ecosystems that have since disappeared. Herbarium specimens of Marsilea quadrifolia L., Elatine macropoda Guss., and Sium latifolium L. from the Pontine Marshes, as well as Rhynchospora alba (L.) Vahl from the Agro Pontino or Aldrovanda vesiculosa L., Achnatherum calamagrostis (L.) P. Beauv., and Trifolium alpinum L. from the Ernici Mountains, represent the last known records of species that are now extinct or no longer found in the Lazio region.
In the photo:
Marsilea quadrifolia L.
From the Erbario Romanum (HR)