Sandro Pignatti (1930–2025): a vegetation scientist extraordinaire

Abstract

I knew this day would come when we woke up to the dreadful news that Sandro is not with us anymore. Besides, we, the global community of botanists, have lost a great person; this is particularly painful for me, as I have lost a mentor and a friend. Sandro and I shared many values, spanning our love for plants, including a common interest in the taxonomy of Limonium (a rather complicated Plumbaginaceae genus) and the complexity of vegetation. In this respect, Sandro was a 'typical' Italian university professor – covering botany in all its latitude. There will be several contributions in this special tribute to Sandro Pignatti's work, looking into the impact of his work in taxonomy and flora-writing (Flora d’Italia in two editions), the iconic European Vegetation Survey (Rodwell, 2026), or the philosophy of science (Guarino, 2026). Here, I focus on Sandro's impact on the theory and methodology of vegetation science and on his contribution to descriptive vegetation science, with syntaxonomy first and foremost.