Maria Cengia Sambo

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Maria Cengia Sambo (23 October 1888 – 29 November 1939)[1] was an Italian botanist, specializing in lichenology. She is considered, along with Camillo Sbarbaro, the most important Italian in lichenology in the first half of the 1900s.[2][failed verification]

Early life[]

Her father died when she was only three years old.[1] When she was nine, her mother married a professor Benvenuto Pellegrini, who became a father figure to her. Thanks to Pellegrini's connection to university, she was captivated by subjects like botany, physics, and astronomy. In particular, her cousin, forest inspector Vittorio Pellegrini, brought her along to gather animals, fossils, minerals, and plants, giving her the chance to explore the natural sciences. In 1905 she received a diploma in elementary education and taught for a brief period. She then attended the University of Padua and graduated with a degree in geometry.[3] Afterwards she obtained a second degree, this time in the natural sciences, and taught physics and math at a technical school in Vicenza.

Career[]

She collected a vast number of botanical specimens, in particular lichens, from the Italian Alps, Venezia Euganea, Belluno region, Feltra region, Garda, and the Euganean Hills.[4] She produced a large part of the work and research on lichens during the first world war without the help of other scientists specializing in lichens.[5] She also published some papers on extra-European lichens at the time.[4] Her isolation in the field contributed to her being cited less often in lichenology.[4]

From 1920 to 1923, she taught botany at the University of Urbino, and continued her work in lichens. While there, she coined the term polysymbiosis to describe mutalism between multiple species.[5] She had cultured bacteria from lichen thalli, assigning the bacteria to Azotobacter, which would create a symbiotic relationship between three microbes.[6]

She married Ettore Sambo in 1924, subsequently having five children with him. After their marriage, she moved to Prato (in Tuscany) where he worked from her home in the Northern Veneto region.[1] She continued her work and studied at the Department of Botany at the University of Florence. Maria and Ettore Sambo worked together to study lichens on Monte Ferrato: Cengia Sambo focused on the ecology of the lichens. The couple catalogued many lichens, which have been updated by modern lichenologists. The couple did have errors in their catalogue, likely attributed to the resources available in the early 1900s as well as being isolated by their Central-European lichenologist peers.[2]

She wrote around 50 publications on lichens including the 1930 study: Lichens of the Patagonia and other regions of Argentina as told by Salesiani missionaries. She worked closely with Alberto De Agostini to collect her data for that study.[7] Agostini coordinated the collection of lichens from Argentina and Sambo worked to catalogue them.

The standard author abbreviation Sambo is used to indicate this person as the author when citing a botanical name.[8]

Legacy[]

In the course of her career, she studied 124 different species of lichens, including 11 new varieties, like the genus Tylophoropsis and the species Phylliscidiopsis abissinica, , , Tylophoropsis nyeriana and .[9]

She collaborated with the magazine New Italian Botany Journal, the magazine Studi Trentiti di Scienze Naturali, the Italian Society of Natural Sciences, the Italian Botany Society, the Botanical Gardens of the University of Naples, the Italian Society for the Progress of Science, the Italian section of the International Society of Microbiology, and the Botanical Archives.

She died in 1939 at 51 years of age.[1]

Select publications[]

  • Cengia-Sambo, Maria. (1929). Contributo alla flora vascolare dell'Urbinate. Nuovo Giornale Botanica Italiana. 35: 425-506.[10]
  • Cengia-Sambo, M. (1930) Licheni della Patagonia e di altre regioni dell'Argentina raccolti dai missionarii salesiani. Contributi Scientifici delle Missioni Salesiana del Venerabile Don Bosci, Tornino/Contrib. Sci. Miss. Salesin. 6: 73 pp. 2 maps, 9 pl..[7]
  • Cengia-Sambo, M. (1939). Licheni del Brasile.[11]
  • Cengia-Sambo, M. (1940) Casi di parassitismo fra due specie licheniche e di autoparassitismo. Considerazioni sul consorzio lichenico. Annali di botanica.[12]

References[]

  1. ^ Jump up to: a b c d Messeri, Albina (1941-01-01). "In Memoriam". Giornale Botanico Italiano. 48 (1–2): 436–442. doi:10.1080/11263504109439808. ISSN 0017-0070.
  2. ^ Jump up to: a b Gheza, Gabriele. "October 2019". Cladoniarium. Retrieved 2020-05-15.
  3. ^ www.comunicacionestian.com https://www.comunicacionestian.com/la-nota-cultural/13508-maria-cengia-sambo. Retrieved 2020-05-14. Missing or empty |title= (help)
  4. ^ Jump up to: a b c Martellos, P. L. Nimis, S. "ITALIC 5.0 - the information system on Italian lichens". dryades.units.it. Retrieved 2020-05-15.
  5. ^ Jump up to: a b Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation (2014). "De Bary's Legacy: The emergence of differing perspectives on lichen symbiosis" (PDF). Huntia. 15.
  6. ^ Spribille, Toby (10 February 2020). "3D biofilms: in search of the polysaccharides holding together lichen symbiosis". FEMS Microbiology Letters. 367 (5). doi:10.1093/femsle/fnaa023. PMC 7164778. PMID 32037451.
  7. ^ Jump up to: a b Cengia Sambo, Maria (1930). Licheni della Patagonia e di altre regioni dell'Argentina raccolti dai missionari Salesiani (in Italian). Torino: Società editrice internazionale. OCLC 860553731.
  8. ^ IPNI.  Sambo.
  9. ^ "Sambo, Maria | International Plant Names Index". www.ipni.org. Retrieved 2020-05-15.
  10. ^ Blake, Sidney Fay; Agriculture, United States Dept of (1961). Geographical guide to floras of the world: an annotated list with special reference to useful plants and common plant names : Part II, Western Europe : Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Great Britain with Ireland, Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Spain, Portugal, Andorra, Monaco, Italy, San Marino, and Switzerland. U.S. Dept. of Agriculture.
  11. ^ Cengia Sambo, Maria (1927). Collected works. OCLC 175297324.
  12. ^ Annali di botanica (in Italian).
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