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

The essay retraces the cultural framework and the editorial genesis of Alfredo Cattabiani's book Florario. Miti, leggende e simboli di fiori e piante, that had been published in 1996 and that became a Mondadori editor's long seller in the publishing series "Oscar". Cattabiani's work is part of a more complex editorial project named after «Storia dell'immaginario» (history of imaginary), divided into several volumes, where the articles written between 1986 and 2000 for the gardening magazine «Gardenia» merged, even in a partially re-elaborated form. The essay aims at focusing the fruitful contribution that Cattabiani gave to the understanding and the divulgation of the plant symbolism in an anthropological perspective.