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« When we observe this plant, nothing particular holds attention, but, when even a scrap of leaf is placed in the mouth, we are impressed by its sugar taste. A small fragment of leaf can sweeten the mouth for more than one hour. » Dr Moisés Santiago Bertoni ( 1857-1929 )
The first appearance in the literature of Stevia Rebaudiana goes back up in 1905. It is due to a botanist of Moisés Santiago Bertoni's name.
Bertoni, of Italian Swiss origin immigrated in Paraguay in 1882 and became a citizen. At the end of 1887, he investigated the North East of Paraguay doing botanical research, in search of rare, not listed plants.
His attention is pricked in the deep when local chemists indicated him the existence of a plant with a sugar taste in this region. He was not to find this rare plant during this expedition and it is only several years later than he received some through a customs officer, Daniel Candia, under the shape of a sample ready to consume with the mate. |
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This sample drove him to communicate to the scientific community its discovery via the Bulletin of the Academy of Asunción's agriculture of 1899. He classified his discovery in the genre Eupatorium and not Stevia at first for lack of having received a whole plant. He called him Eupatorium rebaudianum in thanking of the made work by the paraguayan chemist Ovidio Rebaudi who is the first one to make an analysis pushed by the collected leaves.
Further to this publication, Asunción's British consulate, in the person of Cecil Gosling, informed Royal Botanic Gardens de Kew, near London, the existence of this plant and sent a sample. It was worth a publication in Kew Bulletin in 1901.
It is only 5 years later, in 1904, that received Bertoni a whole plant and decided otherwise to classify this herb in the genre Stevia and not Eupatorium, made published in 1905. Stevia Rebaudiana Bertoni was then officially born in the scientific literature. |
