Calle de las Zinias

The zinnia that names this street grows wild in the dry regions of Mexico. From there seeds reached Johann Gottfried Zinn, an anatomist and botanist who ran the garden of the University of Göttingen, where he cultivated the plant. Zinn died young, at thirty-one, and Linnaeus later named the genus Zinnia in his memory. His surname also stayed in the anatomy of the human eye: ophthalmologists still speak of the zonule of Zinn. The street belongs to a sector of Berruguete with several flower names, added to the map in the mid-twentieth century. When the outlying towns, Chamartín de la Rosa among them, were annexed to Madrid, many streets shared names and had to be rebaptized. In that renewal, a corner of low houses ended up with a small botanical repertoire at its corners. Whoever reads the sign for Zinias today pronounces, without knowing it, the surname of a German physician tied to a flower that came from Mexico.