One hundred eighty-six. These are the years that have passed since Giovanni Gussone, in a famous travel he set foot on the island of Lampedusa. So it was 1828, fifteen years before the island was colonized.

But who was Giovanni Gussone? Why visited the island? Of course to find a portrait, he had to be really an important character of the era.

Florae siculae synopsis, exhibens plantas vasculares in Sicilia insulisque adjacentibus huc usque detectas secundum systema Linneanum dispositas, auctore Joanne Gussone.

He was born February 8, 1787 ‘s from a wealthy family of Villamaina, in the heart of Irpinia. 

He graduated in medicine in 1811 but soon devoted himself to botany, and soon became the largest botanic of Italy. Later he founded the botanical garden of Bocca di falco in Palermo and then appointed Director of that of Naples.

 From 1818 he began a series of trips across Europe, but what will give him more notoriety was the trip to Sicily and the adjacent islands. Arriving in Lampedusa in 1828 on board an brigantino of the Royal Navy made ​​available by King Francis of Naples.

On this trip undertaken in 1828 visit the islands of Lampedusa, Linosa, Lampione and Malta. We stayed 2 to 31 August by tying his name unconsciously and inextricably to Lampedusa.

There were many plant species that Gussone described but as he himself wrote in his most famous work, one that will be most important and remembered forever, until the present day.

The Caralluma europea that is unique in Italy.

With the same name and without any revision. Many other species were later dedicated to him. One of all the Elatine gussonei, another rarity on the island.

It would be nice if one day someone could dedicate a street in Lampedusa to this distinguished personage.

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