ARENA, FILIPPO. - Sicilian Jesuit, b. at Piazza Armerina on 1 May 1708, d. at Rome in 1789; having entered the religious order in 1723, he taught mathematics in various colleges, especially at Malta and at Palermo. After the expulsion of the Jesuits from Sicily in 1767, he settled in Rome.
He left some Selecta problemata ex prima Geometriae practicae parte (Palermo 1757) and various dissertations on physics and astronomy, which were gathered together in his Physicae quaestiones precipuae resolutae (Rome 1777). But of far more original merit is another of his works: La natura e la coltura dei fiori fisicamente esposte (2 vols. of text and one of plates, Palermo 1767-68).
Alongside empirical rules of floriculture and several curious and erroneous opinions, Father A. collected in it the fruit of many observations and experiments on the fertilization of flowers, on the part played in it by pollen, and on pollination by means of insects (26 years before Sprengel, to whom the discovery is ordinarily attributed). Equally ahead of his time are his views on hybridism and on the formation and preservation of plant races through crossing and sowing. A. was a still little-known precursor of modern genetic biology.
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Edmondo Lamalle