Da «Gardenia» a «Florario». Il contributo di Alfredo Cattabiani allo studio del simbolismo vegetale

[Machine translation] The essay reconstructs the cultural context and the editorial genesis of Alfredo Cattabiani's book “Florario. Myths, legends and symbols of flowers and plants”, published in 1996 and became a long seller by the Mondadori publishing house in the “Oscars” series. Cattabiani's work is part of a more comprehensive editorial project called “History of the Imaginary”, divided into several volumes, which brought together, in a partially reworked form, the articles that the author gradually published between 1986 and 2000 in the gardening magazine “Gardenia”. The essay aims to highlight the fruitful contribution of knowledge and dissemination that Cattabiani has made, from an anthropological perspective, to plant symbolism.