The most important bank in the world is the bank of seeds. The “Svalbard Global Seed Vault” is a deposit that could save humanity in case of an accidental loss of traditional botanical genetic seeds of out planet.
The deposit is close to Longyearbyen, a city located on Spitsbergen island, in the remote Artic archipelago of Svalbard about 1200 km far from the North Pole, and it contains most of the 21 most important crops of the earth, such as rice, corn, taro and coconut, with their varieties, so as to ensure the genetic diversity.
Now, in Scandinavia, a new garden is born, and it is equally ambitious because it seems to realize Linnaeus’ dream, the Swedish botanic and naturalist who has scientifically classified the living organisms. In the region called Småland, in a natural oasis surrounded by the water of Möckeln lake, between the Möckelsnäs greenwood – in Sweden, home of Linnaeus – a wonderful botanic garden is reborn exactly where the naturalist has put together the seeds collected in every country that he visited.
Linnaeus was born in 1707 in the Råshult village, and his motto “Innocue vivito numen adest”, or “Live with innocence, God is near”, resumed by Ovidio in Ars amatoria, is written on the front of the central building in the garden, l’Orangery, the structure was built in his memory and 800 plants are kept there with the “Linnaeus Systema Naturae” method, as the title of his famous book.
In fact the plants are divided for their climatic characteristics too: myrtle, plum, apricot, mulberry an pomegranate, along with aloe, passion flower, pineapple and succulent plants, in a harmonious coexistence between different species that seems to prefigure ante litteram the contemporary integration between people.
The architecture and the surface of the Orangery are a perfect copy of the original one: there Linnaeus took care about some plants that couldn’t have survived during the strong Swedish winters, thanks to the hot water flowing in the tubes under the floor. There are many qualities of geranium, his favourites. The gravel paths in the garden regularly host young artists for little concerts of classical music, all of this under the direction of the boss Eva Lennartsson.
The botanic garden of the Uppsala University is the most ancient in Sweden, stretched for the first time in the 1655 by Olof Rudbeck, the old professor of medicine. In the 1741 Linnaeus became the manager of the garden that was abandoned for many years and took the role of professor of medicine (in his professional life Linnaeus studied a lot about the cure of syphilis). So, that is the place where Linnaeus planted the seeds collected during his trips, in Lapland for example, important tours to catalogue plants and flowers and to continue the experiments on the petals. In this garden Linnaeus started with his first scientific observations and taught to students. He was responsible of the first methodology for the modern classification of plants, animals and minerals. “Nomen omen”, Latins would say: Linnaeus, for Civil Registration Carl Nilsson, added to his surname the word “Linnaeus”, that is the Latinization of Swedish “lind”, “Linden” because a splendid specimen of this plant was located in the estate of his family.
Every area of the garden reflects his ideas and every plant was carefully chosen with the aim to remember his educational intents. Next to the garden a “green rehab center” is being planned and will be managed by the renowned psychologist Gunnar Lundin. It is meant to be a rehabilitation center that leverages the extraordinary therapeutic properties that the plants and the flowers have always been for the humans.
Today the Linnaeus garden becomes a “synecdoche”, a part for the whole: the prototype of the ideal garden, in which all the species that he classified found and find in the same moment a collocation and a classification, using the binomial system imperative Aristotelian origin: two Latin names, the first refers to the kind of membership and the second to the species, to avoid any arbitrary and dangerous interpretation.