Calle Gloxinias

In this corner of Berruguete the streets were named like a small urban herbarium, and Calle Gloxinias supplies one of the catalogue’s daintiest flowers. The gloxinia is an indoor plant native to the humid forests of Brazil, famous for its velvet-petalled bells in deep violets, reds and pinks, much prized in nineteenth-century home gardening. The genus recalls Benjamin Peter Gloxin, a German physician and botanist who died very young, without ever seeing these South American plants. Why the map chose this flower for this street was never documented; most likely it followed the botanical current that named the neighbouring streets. Calle Gloxinias traces a small curve beside the Paseo de la Dirección.