ARENA, FILIPPO. - Sicilian Jesuit, b. at Piazza Armerina on 1 May 1708, d. at Rome in 1789; having entered the order in 1723, he taught mathematics in various colleges, especially at Malta and Palermo. After the expulsion of the Jesuits from Sicily in 1767, he settled in Rome.
He left Selecta problemata ex prima Geometriee practicae parte (Palermo 1757) and various dissertations on physics and astronomy, which were collected in his Physicae quaestiones precipuae resolutae (Rome 1777). But another of his works is of far more original merit: 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. gathered in it the fruit of many observations and experiments on the fertilization of flowers, on the role played in it by pollen, and on pollination by means of insects (26 years before Sprengel, to whom the discovery is usually attributed). Equally ahead of their time were his views on hybridism and on the formation and preservation of plant varieties through crossing and sowing. A. was a precursor, still little known, of modern genetic biology.