The flora heritage of the Liguria Alps attracted many botanists and researches from all over Europe in the area starting from the end of the XVIII century. Carlo Allioni, a doctor from Turin, who as first one catalogued the flora heritage of Piedmont, stopped for a while on the rare species of the Pesio Valley. The Carthusian monk Paolo Cumino, botanical expert and mycologist contributed to catalyse the interest of the main researchers in that period on the Liguria Alps. Some years later the Genevan botanist Emile Burnat dedicated the drawing up of the Liguria and Maritime Alps Flora ("Flore des Alpes Maritimes"), a very wide work which classified for the first time the Liguria and Maritime Alps from the botanical geography point of view. Burnat and his collaborators carried out numerous explorations of the territory and very detailed botanizing in order to realize this research. Another person, who together with Burnat contributed to the flora researches of this Alpine area, was the Englishman Clarence Bicknell. A great traveller and free-thinker, Bicknell was an Anglican pastor in the first half of his life, till the difference between his lifestyle and the rules imposed by the English Church became too big. He settled in Bordighera and starting from 1878 he visited many times the Pesio Valley and described in detail and also painting them the rare species and the rich vegetation of the Liguria Alps. Bicknell, idealist and philanthropist, besides being a researcher, added 73 new species to the known flora of the Liguria Alps and contributed to establish more precisely the distribution areas of the species. The homonymous botanical Alpine station is dedicated to the works of Bicknell and Burnat.