Pleasance​,​ Parterre and Gardens of Lisbon

In a garden in Lisbon, you can observe Portugal's oldest *Araucaria heterophylla*. You can feel the velvety touch of the leaves of *Kalanchoe beharensis* while gazing out at the Tagus River. You can discover the metallic sheen of the leaves of *Strobilanthes dyerianus*—hidden in the heart of Lisbon—or learn about the contributions of various Portuguese figures to the field of global botany. Garcia de Orta pioneered tropical medicine and pharmacology with his 1563 Colóquios dos simples e drogas, the first European scientific work published in India, documenting hundreds of Asian medicinal plants unknown to Western science. Cristóvão da Costa built on Orta's work, producing illustrated botanical treatises on Asian flora that circulated widely across Europe. João de Loureiro, a Jesuit missionary in Vietnam and China, authored Flora Cochinchinensis (1790), formally describing hundreds of Southeast Asian species new to science. Félix de Avelar Brotero transformed Portuguese botany domestically, publishing Flora Lusitanica (1804) and Phytografia and founding systematic botanical study on the Iberian Peninsula. José Correia da Serra, a botanist and diplomat, contributed to plant taxonomy and corresponded extensively with figures like Thomas Jefferson and the founders of the Linnean Society, of which he became a Fellow.