Women and botany in Risorgimento Italy

The first Italian women described as botanists by their male peers were active during the Risorgimento. They were few in numbers and only one of them, Elisabetta Fiorini, was recognized for her extensive contributions to the field of cryptogams in Italy by being nominated to important Italian scientific academies. No such recognition was ever alloted to the other female botanists who acted as collectors, correspondents and/or patrons to male botanists, had their own garden of exotic plants, or discovered a new species of phanerogams, and occasionally published on the subject. This study will show that a woman could still belong to Italian scientific academies in the nineteenth century, if like Fiorini, she chose to practice science in a way that was considered at par with that of male scientists.