Tobacco in the Erbario Estense and other Renaissance evidence of the Columbian taxon in Italy

The Erbario Estense, preserved in the Archivio Segreto Estense (Modena State Archives, Italy), is one of the very few sixteenth century herbaria still existing today. Among its exsiccata are a dozen species coming from the Americas, one of which is tobacco. The author of the specimen calls the plant Tabacho, ouer Herba Regina; Camus and Penzig, in the late nineteenth century, identify it as Nicotiana tabacum and affirm that it could be the most ancient direct proof of the presence of this plant in Italy. Today, attribution of the specimen to the above-mentioned species is certain and, according to the studies carried out for the present research, only three other sixteenth century exsiccata of N. tabacum still exist, all of them preserved in the Erbario Aldrovandi in Bologna. Therefore, the specimen of the Erbario Estense is extremely precious from a historical and scientific viewpoint. Tobacco was certainly known by the simplists who were working at that epoch in the lively scientific and medical environment of Ferrara, even if, according to documentary sources, real pharmacological use of the plant seems to have taken place only in successive phases.