Species Crassula tillaea

For Michelangelo Tilli (Michele Angelo Tilli) (1655–1740), Italian physician and botanist. He graduated in medicine and surgery at the University of Pisa (1677). As a naval surgeon in 1861, he travelled to the Balearic Islands and in 1863 to Constantinople on a ‘mercy mission’, together with the florentine surgeon Pier Francesco Pasquali, to tend to son of the Mehmed IV, Sultan of the Ottoman Empire (1648–1687) who had had a serious fall from his horse. From there they visited Albania. Tilli went on to Tunis to study the remains of Carthage and collect plants. He became professor of botany at the University of Pisa in 1685, and director of the botanical gardens, introducing plants from Asia and Africa. He pioneered heated rooms (greenhouses) for growing exotic plants, many from Africa and Asia, and was able to cultivate pineapples and coffee in Italy. He authored Catalogus Plantarum Horti Pisani (1723). He became a member of the Royal Society in 1708.