571-Saxifraga florulenta '25Wp2

Saxifraga florulenta was selected as the representative plant of the Piedmont region (Italy) as part of a national initiative promoted by the Società Botanica Italiana in 2018. The project involved botanists and experts who identified a symbolic species for each Italian region and was coordinated by Lorenzo Peruzzi of the Orto e Museo Botanico di Pisa.

This remarkable species is a rare endemic of the Maritime Alps, restricted to a very small area spanning Italy and France. Considered a palaeo-endemic and glacial relict, Saxifraga florulenta has persisted in isolated alpine refugia despite past climatic fluctuations. It is a perennial plant, maintaining a compact vegetative rosette for decades, at the centre of which a terminal inflorescence eventually develops, producing seeds before the plant completes its life cycle.

The painting depicts this iconic species—also a symbol of the Maritime Alps Natural Park—in its natural habitat, showing both its vegetative rosette and the flowering inflorescence, thus illustrating its reproductive cycle.

The work was exhibited at the headquarters of the Maritime Alps Natural Park, in Terme di Valdieri, on the occasion of the solo exhibition “Racconti di fiori: un viaggio botanico tra le Alpi Liguri e Marittime” in 2025.

Watercolour on paper, 38 × 56 cm
Framed: 57 × 78 cm