The exhibition, curated by Jana Černá and Félix Alonso, reconstructs the stories of eleven Mexican flowers through their traces in herbaria, codices, paintings, poems, and other historical and cultural testimonies.
According to Jana Černá, the flowers are presented as protagonists of cultural life, seducing, healing, protecting, and enabling contact with the divine, beyond their ornamental value.
The exhibition is structured into five thematic sections: love, death, intoxication, power, and conversion, using flowers as a common thread to understand different cultures and eras.
María-Paz Martín, director of the Royal Botanical Garden-CSIC, highlighted that the exhibition invites visitors to see flowers not only as plant diversity but as carriers of memory, knowledge, and culture.
Works from the RJB-CSIC Library will be displayed, many for the first time, including the florilegium 'Hortus floridus' (1614) by C. van de Passe and the New Spain natural history work 'Qvatro libros de la natvraleza' (1615) by Francisco Ximénez.
The collaboration of INSUD Pharma and Iberchem has been fundamental, with the latter creating three olfactory spaces inspired by vanilla, magnolia, and tagete to enrich the sensory experience.
The exhibition will be open from September 30, 2026, to January 12, 2027, at the Royal Botanical Garden, located at Plaza de Murillo, 2.
